Office of Science and Technology Policy

OSTP Public Access Policy Forum

Currently, the National Institutes of Health requires that the published results of research funded by its grants be made available to the public online at no charge within 12 months of publication. The Office of Science and Technology Policy and the White House Open Government Initiative launched the “Public Access Policy Forum” to invite public participation in thinking through what the Federal government’s policy should be with regard to access to published research results from studies funded by other Federal agencies. (For full details, see the Federal Register notice). To that end, OSTP conducted an interactive, online discussion that began Thursday, December 10, 2009, which focused on three major areas of interest:

  • Implementation (Dec. 10 to 20)
  • Features and Technology (Dec. 21 to Dec 31)
  • Management (Jan. 1 to Jan. 7)

OSTP Blog: Public Access Policy Update

March 8, 2010 - OSTP launched a Public Access Policy Forum on Dec. 10, 2009. The forum was designed to be a public consultation on access to publicly funded research results, such as those that appear in academic and scholarly journal articles. In response to your pleas, the forum was extended past its initial Jan. 7 deadline and closed on Jan. 21, 2010.

Since then you may have noticed some changes in OSTP’s online presence—including the disappearance of the hundreds of comments submitted during the course of the forum. Here’s what happened: After the forum closed, we transitioned from http://blog.ostp.gov—the site we used to host the forum—to our new blog at http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/blog. As we noted in the introductory message on our new site, not all of our old content migrated with us, and we are still in the process of moving it to our new digs and integrating comment functionality.

Of course, before we closed up shop we made sure to capture all of the input from our previous host, and we are gradually reposting that content.

Today we are posting two valuable resources that are direct products of the Public Access Policy Forum. While we continue the process of analyzing the literature and comments, below you will find all of the blog posts and their respective comments, as well as never-before-seen submissions that were sent directly to our publicaccess@ostp.gov inbox.

The past month-and-a-half has given OSTP staff the chance to sift through the mounds of fantastic input we received. We were very gratified by the amount of participation the forum generated and are diligently scouring through the data to find common themes, dissenting opinions, concerns, and suggestions that will ultimately help us craft policy recommendations.

We’d like to again thank all of you who have contributed so generously to this process, and we look forward to reporting back on our progress toward developing policy recommendations. This has been an example of the true potential of democracy through the foundations of open government—transparency, collaboration, and participation.

Original blog posts with attached comments:

PublicAccess@ostp.gov submissions: