On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research that will make taxpayer-funded research immediately available for the public to freely access and fully use. This new guidance calls on all federal agencies to generate policies that eliminate the current 12-month waiting period for access to the outputs of federally funded research, including articles and data. 

The memorandum, issued by Dr. Alondra Nelson, underscores the critical role that openness plays in ensuring scientific research integrity, providing important new guidance for the use of digital personal identifiers and robust metadata accompanying articles and datasets. It also calls on agencies to ensure that their policies are updated to ensure equity in both the publishing of and access to the record of science – particularly for traditionally underserved communities, and researchers who are early in their careers.  [SPARC (2022), “2022 Updated OSTP Policy Guidance,” licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License]

Fondren Digital Scholarship Services is closely monitoring developments and is exploring how the library can support Rice researchers. We believe that this new guidance compliments the library’s mission and that work currently being done in Research Data Services and Fondren Library Publishing Services can be leveraged to help researchers comply with new funder policies.