DOE PAGESBeta: DOE’s Public Access Portal Is Two Years Old and Growing
The Department of Energy (DOE) Public Access Gateway for Energy and ScienceBeta (DOE PAGESBeta), the web-based portal that makes scholarly scientific publications resulting from DOE research funding publicly accessible and searchable at no charge to readers, is marking its second anniversary.
DOE PAGESBeta provides free public access to accepted peer-reviewed manuscripts or published scientific journal articles within 12 months of publication. It represents DOE’s response to the February 2013 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memorandum that called on federal agencies to develop plans to provide public access to the results of research they fund within a year of publication.
In July 2014, the Department of Energy issued the DOE Public Access Plan, after becoming the first federal science agency to have its public access plan approved by OSTP. On August 4, 2014, the Department of Energy launched DOE PAGESBeta. And in September 2014, Secretary of Energy Ernest J. Moniz addressed a memorandum to DOE program office leaders and national laboratory directors, “Public Access to the Results of DOE-Funded Scientific Research,” in which he detailed the provisions of the DOE Public Access Plan and the importance of complying with its requirements.
Developed and maintained by the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), DOE PAGESBeta offers free access to the best available full-text version of DOE-affiliated scholarly publications – either the peer-reviewed, accepted manuscript or the published article – after an administrative interval of 12 months.
As OSTI Director Brian Hitson has noted, “OSTI designed DOE PAGESBeta so that it leverages and adapts DOE’s existing scientific and technical information (STI) infrastructure and systems to encompass accepted manuscripts and also capitalizes on the public access achievements of publishers, laboratories, universities, and other institutions.”
DOE STIP, E-Link, PEMPs, and Form 4600
DOE PAGESBeta is a cooperative and cost-effective approach to public access to scientific publications stemming from DOE research and development. The DOE portal employs a hybrid model of centralized metadata and primarily decentralized full-text access to accepted manuscripts or articles hosted by DOE-funded national laboratories, universities, and other institutions, or by individual publishers.
As a key step in implementing DOE PAGESBeta, DOE is building off its existing STI reporting practices to require the submission of peer-reviewed manuscripts by DOE-funded researchers effective October 1, 2014.
The portal capitalizes on the long-established DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) network of STI liaisons from DOE program, field, site, and procurement offices, national laboratories, and research facilities and the corporate E-Link submission system for collecting scientific and technical information to encompass accepted manuscripts. DOE-funded authors at national laboratories and grantee and other research institutions are using this existing infrastructure to submit accepted manuscripts to OSTI.
For articles emanating from DOE national laboratories, DOE provides public access to any scholarly publication published on or after October 1, 2014, with public access enabled within 12 months from publication date. DOE-funded lab-affiliated authors submit accepted manuscript metadata and links (or the full text of the manuscript itself) to OSTI, and national laboratories’ contributions to the success of DOE’s public access plan are measured through the labs’ annual Performance Evaluation and Measurement Plans (PEMPs).
For financial assistance recipients (grantees) at universities and other institutions, the public access requirement applies to any award made or renewed after October 1, 2014. Contributions to public access by grantee authors has been by promoted by a DOE Office of Management Office of Acquisition and Project Management Policy Flash, “Revision to the Federal Assistance Reporting Checklist, DOE F 4600.2,” issued in October 2014.
To complement the DOE-supplied content and in support of the “best available version” concept, OSTI also is collaborating with the publisher consortium CHORUS, or the Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the United States; DOE PAGESBeta ingests publisher-supplied metadata and links to participating publishers’ DOE-affiliated publicly accessible content. OSTI is also engaging with other stakeholder initiatives to advance public access, such as the university and research library community’s Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).
FAQs, Tool for Grantee Submissions, Usability Study, and Tutorials
Hitson Paper
on Public Access
OSTI Director Brian Hitson has published a paper on “Public Access at the United States Department of Energy” on the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI) website. The November 2015 ICSTI Insights article provides an overview of the DOE public access portal, including background on public access in the U.S. and the DOE Public Access Plan and information on how DOE PAGESBeta works and on other U.S. federal agencies’ public access plans.
To support DOE-funded authors and the DOE STIP community in their roles in DOE’s public access implementation, OSTI has prepared extensive Frequently Asked Questions about DOE PAGESBeta and developed a tool to facilitate submission of accepted manuscripts by grantees. OSTI also has completed a pilot usability study of the public access portal evaluating search features, ease of navigation, and the overall site experience, with the goal of identifying areas for enhancements.
OSTI recently created a series of three online tutorials to help users navigate DOE PAGESBeta. The first tutorial was designed for new users: it provides an introduction to the public access gateway, its contents, and its search capabilities. The other two tutorials are intended to help returning users better craft their searches. One tutorial provides additional information on the three types of documents available via DOE PAGESBeta – accepted manuscripts, publisher accepted manuscripts, and published articles; the other tutorial offers tips on how to use the DOE PAGESBeta advanced search to enhance results.
When DOE PAGESBeta was launched two years ago, it contained an initial collection of accepted manuscripts and journal articles as a demonstration of its functionality and eventual expanded content. The portal now contains 25,500 accepted manuscripts and journal articles, including 17,600 that are publicly accessible.
With the support of DOE-funded authors at national laboratories and grantee institutions and the ongoing assistance of DOE program managers and the DOE STIP community, it is anticipated that DOE PAGESBeta will eventually achieve annual growth of 20,000–30,000 publicly accessible articles and manuscripts.
2016 DOE STIP Working Meeting
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and SLAC STI Manager Maggie Loera hosted the 2016 DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program Working Meeting on April 11-13 in Menlo Park, CA. Led and coordinated by OSTI, the DOE STIP is a complex-wide collaboration that works to ensure that the results of DOE-funded research and development (R&D) are collected, preserved, and disseminated.
2016 DOE STIP Working Meeting Attendees
The theme of the meeting was “STIP 2016: Strategies, Technologies, Implementation, and Partnerships to Further the Reach of DOE R&D Results.” Representatives from 16 of the 17 DOE national labs were in attendance, along with representatives from several DOE program, field, and site offices. Topics covered during the formal two-day meeting included the roles of OSTI and the DOE STIP in supporting the modern science environment, intellectual property issues, redesign of the OSTI software center, and digital data.
Public access to scholarly publications, as set forth in the DOE Public Access Plan, was a key focus of the meeting, with updates on progress from OSTI, as well as from each of the labs during roundtable discussions. STI representatives from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory gave detailed presentations on their implementation of public access, covering both digital data and publications aspects of the DOE plan. Several lab STI managers expressed appreciation that provisions encouraging comprehensive public access to scientific publications in laboratory Performance Evaluation and Measurement Plans are contributing to the success of public access efforts.
In addition to the formal meeting, OSTI staff also provided an orientation session for new STIP representatives, and the entire STIP contingent was treated to a very interesting and informative tour at SLAC.
OSTI Convenes DOE Data ID Service Workshop
Since 2008, OSTI has been helping DOE researchers and the public find DOE scientific research data collections through the DOE Data Explorer (DDE). In 2011, OSTI began offering a service enabling DOE researchers to obtain digital object identifiers (DOIs) for individual datasets, and the DDE database began including those individual items as well. Through the DOE Data ID Service, OSTI assigns DOIs to datasets submitted by DOE and its contractor and grantee researchers and registers the DOIs with DataCite to aid in citation, discovery, retrieval, and reuse. OSTI assigns and registers DOIs for datasets for DOE researchers as a free service to advance data discoverability and citation.
On April 14, following the 2016 DOE STIP Working Meeting, OSTI held the first-ever one-day DOE Data ID Service workshop at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory conference center. OSTI convened the workshop to gain a better understanding of the data needs of researchers and thereby help make the DOE Data ID Service and DOE Data Explorer more useful and integrated to meet those needs, while fulfilling DOE’s public access and dissemination mandates. Attendees included current DOE Data ID Service clients, interested and potential clients, DOE STIP community members, and program managers with data-focused oversight.
The workshop opened with an OSTI presentation outlining the basic workflow of the DOE Data ID Service and highlighting how its data team is committed to “customer focused development,” working with each client to explain client customization capabilities and the importance of quality landing pages and quality metadata. OSTI also explained how DOIs are “minted” through its membership with DataCite, demonstrated the DOE Data Explorer, and provided an overview of the DOE Policy for Digital Research Data Management.
Current and potential DOE Data ID Service clients from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Materials Project, the DOE Office of Thermal Technologies’ Geothermal Data Repository, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Active Data Biology project, and the DOE Office of Science’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement program presented their data research and explained their workflows. DataCite Director Patricia Cruse presented new enhancements and updates to the data citation service.
The workshop then featured an open discussion between OSTI and attendees on various topics and issues raised throughout the day – and closed with attendees expressing the desire that OSTI host additional workshops on a regular basis so that both current and potential data clients have the opportunity to meet and discuss issues, solutions, and future projects.
OSTI is intent on learning more about what DOE researchers do, how they do it, and the challenges they face. OSTI will continue to collaborate with our current and potential data clients and stands prepared to work with DOE researchers in other collaborations and domains in support of their data research and management needs. To make your DOE-funded research data more discoverable by registering it for a DOI or to learn more about the DOE Data Explorer or the DOE Data ID Service, please contact us at ddecomments@osti.gov.
Statistically Speaking: Additional Digital Object Identifiers Increase Full-Text Availability in SciTech Connect
OSTI recently completed a project resulting in nearly 500,000 digital object identifiers being added to journal records in the OSTI collections. OSTI queried CrossRef, an official DOI registration agency, and used a matching algorithm to compare metadata such as titles, authors, and publication dates to retrieve DOIs for thousands of journal articles. Now these DOIs are adding full-text availability to OSTI records by providing direct links to the publisher sites; with these additions, there are more than 1.2 million records with DOIs in SciTech Connect, DOE’s primary repository for DOE science, technology, and engineering research information.
DOE encourages the use of persistent identifiers to improve discoverability of and attribution for STI. Having this piece of metadata available for as many records as possible is another way OSTI is increasing access to the results of DOE R&D results. From October 2014 forward, the public will be able to gain free access to journal articles resulting from DOE research funding. For articles published before the DOE’s Public Access Plan went into effect, the addition of these 500,000 DOIs does not make them freely accessible, but it facilitates access by providing a link to a publisher’s or society’s website where an article can usually be accessed through a subscription or per article purchase.
What Is A Technical Report?
Technical reports (or scientific reports) are important sources of scientific and technical information derived from research projects sponsored by DOE; they describe the processes, progress, or results of research and development or other scientific and technological work, including recommendations or conclusions of the research and such information as the original hypotheses, approaches used, and findings. Technical reports are useful to researchers because they often include more comprehensive or detailed information than scholarly papers or presentations, including experimental designs and technical drawings. Technical reports also may document negative results, which can help prevent the misapplication of research resources.
Technical reports submitted to OSTI that are publicly releasable are available via SciTech Connect.
Search Tip: Locating Snippets of ScienceCinema Videos
ScienceCinema highlights scientific videos featuring leading-edge research from DOE. Using innovative, state-of-the-art audio indexing and speech recognition technology from Microsoft Research, it allows users to quickly find video files produced by the DOE national laboratories, other DOE research facilities, and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), which operates the world’s largest particle physics laboratory outside of Geneva.
In ScienceCinema, users are able to search the full transcripts of videos, just as they might search full-text documents in OSTI’s other products. After the search term is entered into the basic or advanced search field, an audio search is launched, returning results as snippets of text and including timestamps to show when each snippet occurs in the video. Selecting a snippet will begin play of the video at the exact point where the search term or terms are spoken. Lengthy videos are more accessible because users can easily and quickly locate the most relevant parts and play them instantly.
Meet Lynn Davis
Lynn Davis
Lynn Davis joined OSTI in 1995 at the explosive and exciting onset of publicly accessible information on the World Wide Web. Since then, Davis has provided content management expertise for OSTI activities and partnerships in the technical evolution from paper to electronic DOE STI submissions and accessibility. Davis has managed first-generation and current developments of DOE, DOE program, and OSTI websites and systems including searchable, federated deep-web repositories and legacy STI collections. She currently serves in the OSTI Office of Access and Operations as product manager for the National Library of EnergyBeta and DOE R&D Accomplishments and co-product manager for Science.gov.
Lynn, her husband Kent, and their two daughters reside in Knoxville. She has a Bachelor of Science from James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, and a Master's in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Retiree Tribute: Pat Kerns
Pat Kerns
Pat Kerns spent the last 13 years of her 32-year federal career at OSTI. During her OSTI tenure, Pat was the office manager for Jim Smith and Tom Laughlin of the Document Management Branch and R.L. Scott in Project and Program Development. Pat witnessed the closure of DOE’s microfiche and printing plant programs due to shifting technology as OSTI transitioned to web-based services and electronic dissemination of DOE STI. As OSTI experienced profound and rapid change, Pat was there to lend a helping hand.
In retirement, Pat and her husband Jim have spent much of their time volunteering and helping others. Their volunteer work has included Red Cross disaster relief and humanitarian assistance in Florida, Tennessee, and in New York City after 9/11. They also have traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Great Britain. Eventually, Pat and Jim plan to leave the green hills of Tennessee for their new home in Palm Bay, Florida.
This retiree tribute is intended to help our OSTI community keep up with former colleagues and friends. Look for additional tributes to OSTI retirees in upcoming issues.
In the OSTI Collections: Solitons
Juan Elizondo-Decanini
Image credit: Sandia National Laboratories
The mathematical theory of solitons can be applied to fluid mechanics, fiber optics, magnets, plasmas, atmospheric waves, superconductivity, and even tsunamis. Among the DOE scientists using soliton physics in their research is Juan Elizondo-Decanini of Sandia National Laboratories.
DOE databases provide a myriad of free DOE research project reports and publications about soliton equations and their applications. Read more about solitons in William Watson’s white paper, In the OSTI Collections: Solitons.
Check out In the OSTI Collections to see other featured topics, including The Space Environment and Space Technology; Energy from Thorium; Clouds, Sunlight, and Radiant Heat; and The Kondo Effect.
The Latest from OSTIblog
OSTIblog features the technology, services, people, and policies that are crucial to OSTI’s role in increasing accessibility of DOE-sponsored research. Here are some of the most recent OSTIblogs:
- The Soliton: A Solitary Wave that Retains Its Identity over Distance
- James Van Allen – Space Pioneer
- Thorium – An Element with Promise
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