Improving Access to U.S Department of Energy R&D Results Agency/Publisher Collaboration

Improving Access to U.S Department of Energy R&D Results Agency/Publisher Collaboration

Brian A. Hitson

Associate Director

Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) 

APE 2013 Conference: January 29, 2013

U.S Federal Research Budget by Agency

All Other 7%

National Science Foundation 4%

NASA 6%

Energy 8%

Health & Human Services 22%

Defense (military) 53%

Source: OMB, 2012

Department of Energy is largest U.S. funder of physical sciences ~ $5B.

Most immediate output of this investment is Scientific and Technical Information (STI) … which comes in many forms: 

• Journal articles
• Technical reports
• Conference papers
• Theses/Dissertations
• Scientific and technical computer software
• Datasets
• Patents
• Workshop reports
• Videos
• Accepted manuscripts

Public Dissemination Obligations

U.S. Government has long recognized its responsibilities to publicly disseminate unclassified STI.

• Atomic Energy Acts of 1946 and 1954 established a program for the dissemination of unclassified scientific and technical information and for the control of classified information.
• Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 defined responsibilities for developing, collecting, and making scientific and technical information available for distribution.
• Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 provided for maintaining a central source of information and disseminating information.

Energy Policy Act of 2005

"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."

Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)

Mission

Advance science and sustain technological creativity by making R&D findings available and useful to Department of Energy (DOE) researchers and the public.

Premise: Science advances only if knowledge is shared

Corollary: Accelerating the sharing of scientific knowledge accelerates the advancement of science

DOE STI Program

• OSTI manages agency-wide program.
• DOE R&D results are:
  • Collected from DOE offices, labs, and facilities, as well as university grantees;
  • Preserved for re-use; and
  • Made accessible via multiple web outlets.
• Interagency and international exchanges/partnerships leverage access and use of DOE R&D results.

OSTI Dissemination Products & Discovery Tools

We produce search tools that make DOE R&D results available.

Information Bridge

DOE Data Explorer

ScienceCinema

E-Print Network

DOepatents

Energy Science and Technology Software Center

DOE Green Energy

DOE Tech Transfer Information

DOE R&D Accomplishments

Science Conference Proceedings

Energy Citations Database

Federated Products

Science Accelerator – Covers a range of R&D results (reports, patents, citations, eprints, etc.) from DOE.

Science.gov – Databases and websites offer over 200 million pages of science information from the U.S. government.

WorldWideScience.org – Provides over 400 million pages of science information from databases and portals in 70+ countries.

Usage metrics

OSTI Web Traffic

• 300M page views/downloads in FY 2012
• 70% from domestic sources
• 30% from international sources
• Majority of domestic traffic from .com domains

Key remaining "gap" is in DOE's ability to fully account for and provide access to its scholarly literature output …

Journal Articles

Collaboration #1: FundRef

Problem:

• U.S. Federal agencies can't easily account for scholarly literature output
• Standard metadata has not included funding source information

Solution:

• FundRef - a pilot to standardize funding source information for scholarly publications

The FundRef Pilot

Goal: To standardize funding information within the body of regular metadata collected by scholarly publications for submission to CrossRef.

• Specific Task: Add 'agency name' metatag and contract/grant number to CrossRef metadata.
• Final report/recommendations expected March 2013

The FundRef Workflow

1. FundRef Registry provides standard funder names to publisher manuscript tracking systems.

2. Publishers ask authors to select correct funders and provide grant numbers upon manuscript submission.

3. Funder information transferred to publisher production systems.

4. Publishers send collected funder information in their CrossRef deposits.

5. Funders and other stakeholders query FundRef API:

A. Given funder & grant numbers, return DOIs of publication funded

B. Given DOI, return funder identifiers and grant numbers associated with DOI

6. Funding information displayed on publisher PDFs and websites using standard CrossMark UI.

• Governance to be determined: Funder Registry*
• Publisher System: Manuscript Tracking System
• Publisher Production Systems
• CrossRef: FundRef API
• Funders Institutions Researchers Publishers – Production Registry and FundRef data will be openly available under CCO waiver

Key features:

• Standard agency naming conventions
• Authors to select agency name/sub-program and provide contract/grant number
• Publishers capturing data in production workflows
• Depositing the data with CrossRef
• Displaying the information on published articles
• Disseminating the data back to funding agencies and others

Collaboration #2: ORCID

Will the real John Smith please stand up?

Open Researcher and Contributor ID

• Provides a persistent, unique digital identifier for researchers and authors.
• Supports automated linkages between them and their submitted works.
• Distinguishes their research activities from those of others with similar names.

Early in 2013 OSTI will begin to support submittal of ORCID identifiers as part of author name information. Once this system is in place, it will be possible to accurately locate records based on an author's ORCID ID.

Collaboration #3: OSTI-Publisher Metadata-Sharing and Linking Agreements

Goal: Improve visibility and usage of DOE research results through reciprocal links from OSTI and publisher products.

LICENSE AGREEMENT

DOE-Affiliated Articles by Publisher (2007-2012)

• Elsevier – 21%
• Amerian Chemical Society – 19%
• American Physical Society – 18%
• American Institute of Physics – 8%
• Institute of Physics – 7%
• Wiley – 6%
• Springer – 4%
• Royal Society of Chemistry
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Nature
• American Geophysical Union
• National Academy of Sciences
• Optical Society of America
• Taylor Francis
• American Society for Microbiology
• American Nuclear Society
• Public Library of Science
• American Association for the Advancement of Science
• EDP Sciences

Source: Web of Science

Roles/Functions

Current Publisher Partners:

• AIP, Elsevier, APS, American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB)
• Discussions underway with other primary publishers

Key Benefits of these Agreements

• Improves DOE's ability to more fully account for its scholarly (article) output.
• Provides the public a better mechanism to find DOE scholarly output without having to use multiple search engines.
• Drives web traffic to publishers and the Version of Record.
• Increases opportunities for reference linking across different types of STI (i.e., articles, technical reports, datasets).

Relationship between 'Public Access' & the OSTI-Publisher Agreements

• These agreements represent a step forward in public access. Agency-funded scholarly literature becomes easier to account for and find.
• They do not fulfill the broadly-understood meaning of "public access." (Unless the particular journal or article is already provided as "open access" or becomes accessible after an embargo period)

Potential Next Steps

• The OSTI-Publisher agreements demonstrate the workability of a hybrid/distributed approach to public access – if decisions are made to pursue public access.
  • Centralized metadata
  • Decentralized full text
    • Article (Version of Record) at publisher website
    • Accepted manuscript at author's institution or other host site
• U.S. Executive and Legislative branches of government are considering broader implementation of "public access" beyond the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and PubMed Central.

Conclusions

• OSTI welcomes the participation of additional publishers in these metadata-sharing agreements.
• OSTI recognizes and appreciates the value publishers add to scholarly literature.
• OSTI continues to seek win-win-win arrangements to ensure the dissemination and sustainability of scholarly publications that support:
  • The public and scientific/academic communities; and
  • The publishers; and
  • DOE.

Thank You!

Brian A. Hitson

hitsonb@osti.gov

www.osti.gov

865-576-1199