Publications Public Access Guidance

The Public Access to Scientific Publications section of the DOE Public Access Plan (June 2023) outlines the Department's approach to implementing public access to scholarly publications resulting from DOE-funded research. Policy implementation of public access to scientific publications is outlined in DOE O 241.1C, Scientific and Technical Information Management.

Scope and Applicability

The requirements of this public access policy apply to scholarly publications arising from activities undertaken with DOE funds, whether in whole or in part, unless otherwise prohibited by law, regulation, or policy. This includes scholarly publications produced by DOE Federal employees, contractors, and financial assistance recipients.

Consistent with the 2022 OSTP memorandum, “scholarly publications” always include the peer-reviewed research articles or final manuscripts published in scholarly journals, and may include peer-reviewed book chapters, editorials, and peer-reviewed conference proceedings published in other scholarly outlets that result from Federally funded research. Conference proceedings or papers that are subsequently published in a peer-reviewed journal are considered scholarly publications and are thus subject to the submission requirements stated in this Plan. Classified or controlled unclassified information (CUI)/data and research will not be made publicly available.

Requirements

For each scholarly publication, the DOE Federal employees, financial assistance recipients, or contractors must submit the full-text accepted manuscript, including conference proceedings or papers published in peer-reviewed journals, and the associated metadata for the publication to DOE. Scholarly publications must be made available without any embargo or delay after publication. If the article is published as open access (OA), the submitter may provide either the accepted manuscript or the OA article (provided there are no restrictions on DOE ingesting the OA article), along with the metadata. DOE will permanently retain accepted manuscripts and any ingested OA articles in DOE PAGES® for archival and preservation purposes.

In addition to the requirement for submission of accepted manuscripts and associated metadata, authors must include a statement acknowledging DOE as a funding agency, along with the award number or contract number, in the full text of the publication.

Roles and Responsibilities

DOE is responsible for communicating public access requirements to Federal employees, contractors, and financial assistance recipients. The submission of scholarly publications and associated metadata is a condition of continued funding consistent with the terms and conditions of the award or contract. DOE will ensure compliance through mechanisms already in place for reporting and closeout of awards.

Federal employees, contractors, and financial assistance recipients are responsible for providing the full text of the accepted manuscript and metadata to OSTI through established DOE scientific and technical information (STI) ingest systems.

OSTI is responsible for operating and maintaining DOE’s designated public access repository, DOE PAGES, along with the corporate STI ingest system, E-Link. OSTI is responsible for making the scholarly publications and associated metadata publicly available. OSTI will work with the STI Managers at DOE National Laboratories, Technical Information Officers, and with procurement officials for awards, to acquire any missing accepted manuscripts and metadata.

Accessing DOE-Funded Publications and Metadata

DOE PAGES, hosted and maintained by OSTI, is the Department’s official designated repository for scholarly publications resulting from DOE funding. After submission to OSTI, DOE PAGES provides access to the publication record without delay. The record includes the full text of the accepted manuscript and associated metadata, thus providing immediate and free access to the public. Publication records in DOE PAGES will also include the digital object identifiers (DOI), linking to the published version of the article, which may also be publicly available.

DOE PAGES supports machine-to-machine access to publications and metadata through an OSTI application programming interface (API). OSTI provides APIs with defined terms of service to allow third party use of the information it provides. DOE PAGES provides metadata within the publication record for citation in widely used formats such as MLA, APA, Chicago, and BibTeX. Additionally, DOE PAGES supports export of metadata citations in CSV/Excel, XML, JSON, and RIS formats. The metadata contained in DOE PAGES is in the public domain and available for unlimited use and re-use.

Using and Reusing DOE-Funded Publications

For peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts, DOE’s government license allows DOE to distribute copies of accepted manuscripts to the public. DOE’s government license is reserved ab initio by the terms and conditions of the relevant contract or agreement and takes precedence over a subsequent transfer of copyright by the DOE contractor or financial assistance recipient. Therefore, DOE-funded authors will not be in violation of any copyright by submitting such accepted manuscripts and metadata to OSTI. However, publishers’ copyright transfer agreements and journal publication agreements may include language about withholding any distribution of the manuscript for a period of time (e.g., a 12-month embargo period). To avoid any misunderstanding, contractors and financial assistance recipients who sign such agreements should ensure the agreements do not include an embargo period; however, as stated above, the government license takes precedence over any subsequent transfer of copyright.

In making the accepted manuscript publicly available to fulfill DOE's public access commitment, it is not necessary to pay “author pays”/ “Gold OA” fees or article processing charges to enable public access to their research. The government license for accepted manuscripts allows DOE to make the accepted manuscripts publicly accessible immediately, and to make them freely available to read, download, and analyze.

A member of the public who obtains a copyrighted, accepted manuscript from DOE may use and re-use the manuscript in accordance with U.S. copyright law but does not have the right to reproduce, make derivative works, further distribute, or publicly display or perform the work. Since DOE’s government license is for government purposes only, DOE cannot transfer any of its rights to the public. Rather, a person who obtains a copyrighted, accepted manuscript from DOE may read, download, and analyze the manuscript and may utilize the manuscript in accordance with recognized legal constructs.

A person who obtains a copyrighted, accepted manuscript from DOE is restricted from practicing the rights afforded to DOE under its government license, since those rights are for government purposes only. As such, DOE is not able to sublicense its rights to the public in a copyrighted, accepted manuscript.

Providing attribution to the author(s) of copyrighted works is fairly common. Often, the terms and conditions of a copyright license or assignment requires attribution. For example, the Creative Commons BY (CC BY) license requires licensees to give attribution to the author(s). The CC BY license also permits licensees to reproduce and make derivative works. However, since the government’s license is for government purposes only, DOE is not able to transfer its rights to the public in copyrighted, accepted manuscripts. Consequently, DOE cannot itself apply the CC BY license, or any other license, to copyrighted, accepted manuscripts. Nevertheless, DOE, within OSTI search tools such as DOE PAGES, requests that users appropriately acknowledge use of those research results.

Questions and Comments

For additional information about public access to publications, see the DOE PAGES FAQs or email pagescomments@osti.gov.