NSF's OSTP response released: "Today's Data, Tomorrow's Discoveries"

The community has been waiting with baited breath to see what NSF would do regarding the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's mandate for public access to results of federally funded research.  The memorandum from OSTP, "Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research", was issued in February 22. 2013 and directs Federal agencies with more than $100M in R&D expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research available to the public within one year of publication and requiring researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research. 

The National Science Foundation has now issued a plan: "Today's Data, Tomorrow's Discoveries."   The requirement will apply to new awards resulting from proposals submitted or due, on or after the effective date of the Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide that will be issued in January 2016. 

Section 3.1 provides the following detail:

NSF will require that either the version of record or the final accepted peer-reviewed manuscript in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and papers in juried conference proceedings or transactions described in the scope above (Section 2.0) and resulting from new awards resulting from proposals submitted, or due, on or after the January 2016 effective date must: 

•  Be deposited in a public access compliant repository designated by NSF;

•  Be available for download, reading, and analysis free of charge no later than 12 months after initial publication;

•  Possess a minimum set of machine-readable metadata elements in a metadata record to be made available free of charge upon initial publication (Section 7.3.1); 

•  Be managed to ensure long-term preservation (Section 7.7); and 

•  Be reported in annual and final reports during the period of the award with a unique persistent identifier8 that provides links to the full text of the publication as well as other metadata elements. 

UK Libraries has been preparing for this since the OSTP memorandum was released and we are developing services and training to help our University of Kentucky researchers comply with this mandate.  Stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks!  

Article of the Week: It's Good to Share: Why Environmental Scientists’ Ethics Are Out of Date

1. 
   

2. Abstract

   
   

   Although there have been many recent calls for increased data sharing, the majority of environmental scientists do not make their individual data sets publicly available in online repositories. Current data-sharing conversations are focused on overcoming the technological challenges associated with data sharing and the lack of rewards and incentives for individuals to share data. We argue that the most important conversation has yet to take place: There has not been a strong ethical impetus for sharing data within the current culture, behaviors, and practices of environmental scientists. In this article, we describe a critical shift that is happening in both society and the environmental science community that makes data sharing not just good but ethically obligatory. This is a shift toward the ethical value of promoting inclusivity within and beyond science. An essential element of a truly inclusionary and democratic approach to science is to share data through publicly accessible data sets.

To read the entire article go to:

http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/65/1/69.full



______________________________________________

BioScience (January 2015) 65 (1):69-73. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biu169First published online: October 22, 2014

Article of the Week: Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate

This is not a new article, but one that resonates with me as I help researchers understand that it is in their best interest to share their data. 

Abstract

Background

Sharing research data provides benefit to the general scientific community, but the benefit is less obvious for the investigator who makes his or her data available.

Principal Findings

We examined the citation history of 85 cancer microarray clinical trial publications with respect to the availability of their data. The 48% of trials with publicly available microarray data received 85% of the aggregate citations. Publicly available data was significantly (p = 0.006) associated with a 69% increase in citations, independently of journal impact factor, date of publication, and author country of origin using linear regression.

Significance

This correlation between publicly available data and increased literature impact may further motivate investigators to share their detailed research data.

Introduction

Sharing information facilitates science. Publicly sharing detailed research data–sample attributes, clinical factors, patient outcomes, DNA sequences, raw mRNA microarray measurements–with other researchers allows these valuable resources to contribute far beyond their original analysis[1]. In addition to being used to confirm original results, raw data can be used to explore related or new hypotheses, particularly when combined with other publicly available data sets. Real data is indispensable when investigating and developing study methods, analysis techniques, and software implementations. The larger scientific community also benefits: sharing data encourages multiple perspectives, helps to identify errors, discourages fraud, is useful for training new researchers, and increases efficient use of funding and patient population resources by avoiding duplicate data collection. 

To read the rest of the article go to http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0000308

• 
  
• Article Source: Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate
  Piwowar HA, Day RS, Fridsma DB (2007) Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate. PLoS ONE 2(3): e308. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000308
• 
  
•