Secretary Chu’s Policy Statement on Scientific Integrity Notes OSTI and Its Mission
The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) plays an integral role in ensuring transparency and access to the results of the Department of Energy’s scientific efforts – and such transparency and access help assure DOE’s scientific integrity, according to a policy statement recently issued by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
“In December 2010,” Secretary Chu wrote in a May 11, 2012, memo to DOE employees, “the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House issued a memorandum asking all agencies to establish a scientific integrity policy. In response to this call, I recently signed the Secretarial Policy Statement on Scientific Integrity for the Department of Energy applicable to all DOE Federal employees. This policy builds on the Department’s existing policies and best practices to support a culture of scientific integrity.”
“Science and technology are the foundation of all Department of Energy activities…,” the Secretarial Policy Statement on Scientific Integrity opens. “The Department’s mission relies on objective, reliable, accurate, and accessible scientific and technical information.” And OSTI, which fulfills the agency's responsibilities to collect, preserve and disseminate scientific and technical information emanating from the Department’s research and development activities, contributes to scientific integrity in vital ways.
“DOE will facilitate the free flow of scientific and technological information,” the policy statement provides, “consistent with standards for treatment of classified, sensitive, private, and proprietary information. Transparency and accessibility of scientific and technological information support the continued advancement of a sound science and technology base to help guide and inform the nation’s critical public policy decisions; advance the national, economic and energy security of the U.S.; facilitate the accomplishment of DOE mission objectives; and maximize the public value of such efforts.”
The Secretarial Policy Statement on Scientific Integrity also indicates that, “[c]onsistent with the Administration’s Open Government Initiative, the Department will use its website and the resources of its Office of Scientific and Technical Information to help make its research findings more widely available to the public.”
OSTI provides access to scientific and technical information using web-based searchable databases, offering ever-expanding sources of R&D information to DOE, the research community and the science-attentive public. The databases offer search simplicity as well as advanced capabilities, such as customized alerts, results displayed in relevance ranked order and downloadable search results for a broad array of scientific information related to DOE missions.
OSTI’s DOE collection, Science Accelerator, searches 11 key DOE resources, including the results of DOE’s R&D projects and programs, major R&D accomplishments, DOE patents, and recent research and scientific videos of interest to DOE.
OSTI works with DOE program offices, field offices, national labs, and grantees to acquire the scientific and technical information from departmental R&D. Through OSTI web products, these R&D results are accessed nearly 300 million times annually.
Secretary Chu’s policy statement is posted on the “Scientific Integrity” page of the White House OSTP website.
DOE’s Science.gov Mobile Application Makes Two Top-10 Lists
A mobile application developed and hosted by the Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) has been honored by two leading information-technology publications.
Both Information Week and Government Computer News recently published top-10 lists of government mobile applications, and OSTI's mobile app for the Science.gov website that we created and host on behalf of the Science.gov Alliance made both lists. What's more, the Science.gov mobile application was the only interagency mobile app to appear on both of the publications' top-10 lists.
Science.gov, launched in 2002 and now in its fifth generation, is a gateway to U.S. government information and R&D results. With a single query, Science.gov searches more than 50 scientific databases and 200 million pages of science information and accesses an index of more than 2,100 scientific websites. Science.gov is a portal to content provided by 17 organizations in 13 federal science agencies, including OSTI's DOE science resources and R&D collections. We introduced Science.gov Mobile in September 2011.
The June 15, 2012, issue of Information Week included a look at federal agencies' newest mobile offerings and named the mobile version of the Science.gov website as one of “10 Handy Mobile Apps from Uncle Sam”.
“On-the-go science buffs,” Information Week reported, “can now access that data trove via a mobile version of the [Science.gov] website or a downloadable Android app. Users can get Wikipedia and EurekAlert [science news] results related to their searches.”
A week later, the June 22, 2012, issue of Government Computer News released its list of “The 10 best federal mobile apps”, and that list likewise featured the Science.gov mobile application. “Billed as a tool to help kids with homework,” Government Computer News said, “[Science.gov Mobile] is actually a surprisingly powerful search engine that checks science data from 13 federal agencies going back to 1990. So if you have a science-related question, there is a good chance that someone in government has asked the same thing at some point, and probably commissioned a study to get the answer. Having access to all that data is a lot better than having it sit unused in some dusty file cabinet. It could probably even be a boon to researchers to keep them from duplicating research, and it will certainly help your kids get an A on their science papers.”
OSTI and the Science.gov Alliance are heartened by Information Week’s and Government Computer News’ write-ups about the Science.gov mobile application, and we certainly hope more and more people will take advantage of the service. Science.gov and its mobile app are major contributions to “open” and “digital” government.
OSTI takes its mission very seriously. We work hard to advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available and useful to DOE researchers and the public. And to accomplish our mission, we do our best to provide an array of web tools and capabilities designed to deliver science information to desktops, tablets and mobile phones everywhere. So it is gratifying to see these tools recognized for their utility, ease of use, and ingenuity.
ScienceCinema Highlighted in DOE Open Government Plan 2.0
For more than 60 years, OSTI has been a pioneer in open government. Our latest contributions to making scientific and technical information accessible have been recognized in the Department of Energy’s Open Government Plan 2.0
On January 21, 2009, his first full day in office, President Obama signed the Memorandum of Transparency and Open Government, which called for "an unprecedented level of openness in government." Agencies subsequently were directed by the Office of Management and Budget to prepare open government plans that would serve "to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration" throughout the Federal Government. DOE's initial Open Government Plan was published in the spring of 2010.
On April 9, 2012, DOE published its Open Government Plan 2.0, with an introduction by Secretary Chu. The new plan focuses on collaboration and lists six new initiatives that DOE has undertaken since the initial plan. One of the featured new initiatives is OSTI's ScienceCinema (see pages 19-20), which we launched in February 2011 and allows users to quickly find videos produced by the DOE National Labs and other DOE research facilities, as well as CERN.
The DOE Open Government Plan 2.0 also includes updates on OSTI’s products and services that were listed in the initial plan. The mentions include Green Energy Portal, ScienceEducation.gov, and our contributions to Data.gov and transparency, including Science Accelerator, data sets, the National Library of Energy concept, Multilingual WorldWideScience.org, and Science.gov.
OSTI is proud that the DOE Open Government Plan 2.0 recognizes several of our ongoing and planned products and services. We are committed to sustaining OSTI's legacy of serving the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration.
OSTI Holds 2012 STIP Working Meeting
The 2012 Department of Energy (DOE) Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) Working Meeting, Embracing the Future, was held in Augusta, GA., April 18-19. Within the DOE Office of Science, OSTI has the responsibility for coordinating STI activities and for leading a collaborative effort to a distributed STI environment. To that end, OSTI and designated representatives from the Headquarters Programs, Field Offices, National Laboratories, and facility contractors who are STI program stakeholders work together to facilitate access to STI and identify best practices, as well as objectives and goals. Each year our office organizes a meeting of these STI stakeholders. In addition to the two-day STIP Working Meeting, representatives particpated in STIP orientation sessions and DOE Only and DOE Contractor Only meetings.
The 2012 STIP Working Meeting was hosted by Kevin Schmidt, STI manager for Savannah River National Laboratory, and Debbie Caver, Technical Information Officer (TIO) for Savannah River Operations Office. The meeting was attended by STI Managers and reps from DOE laboratories and facilities across the country. Speakers included Dr. Jeffrey Salmon, Deputy Director for Resource Management in the DOE Office of Science; Dr. Walt Warnick, OSTI Director; Mark Martin, OSTI Assistant Director for Program Integration; and Judy Gilmore, OSTI STIP Liaison, as well as STI Managers from across the complex and technical experts from Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Savannah River National Laboratory.
Meet OSTI Director Walt Warnick
Dr. Walt Warnick, Director of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) in the Department of Energy Office of Science, embraces the opportunities offered by the web to accelerate the spread of knowledge about science and technology. To this end, he has championed aggressive efforts to capitalize on technological advances to develop and provide state-of-the art products and services for sharing knowledge. Dr. Warnick and his colleagues continuously work to further advance web search technology.
Dr. Warnick is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) "for leadership in the federal scientific information community and for contributions to the conceptualization, development, and implementation of innovative programs that significantly advance access to government information." He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland and his Bachelor of Engineering Science from The Johns Hopkins University.
Statistically Speaking: A Steady Increase in STI Submissions
OSTI is the DOE office that collects, preserves, and disseminates DOE-sponsored R&D results that are the outcomes of R&D projects or other funded activities at DOE labs and facilities nationwide and grantees at universities and other institutions. The graph on the left shows the steady increase in submissions by labs and facilities over the past several years. From FY 2010 to FY 2011, DOE labs and facilities increased submissions 20 percent. This includes a 61 percent jump in submission of scientific journal articles. Typically the information is submitted in the form of technical documents, conference papers, articles, multimedia, and software, collectively referred to as scientific and technical information (STI). While STI management is called out in a DOE directive (DOE O 241.1B) with requirements for contracting officers and others, we rely on a collaborative working relationship with STI managers at each DOE field office and national laboratory to ensure cohesive processes for the widely distributed program.
DOE Science Showcase - Nanotechnology
OSTI posts to its website a new DOE Science Showcase each month highlighting R&D results within key DOE databases. See the July Showcase - Nanotechnology, or the June Science Showcase - Fuel Cells. The research documents found here are freely available to the public. These and other science topics are made easily searchable through the many tools and services provided by OSTI as part of its corporate function called out in various legislation, and most recently specified in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which reads: “The Secretary, through the Office of Scientific and Technical Information, shall maintain within the Department publicly available collections of scientific and technical information resulting from research, development, demonstration, and commercial applications activities supported by the Department.” OSTI databases offer search simplicity as well as advanced search capabilities such as customized alerts, results displayed in relevance ranked order, and downloadable search results for a broad array of scientific information related to DOE missions.
OSTI Mission: To advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available
and useful to Department of Energy (DOE) researchers and the public.
