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FAQs

E-Link FAQs | Public Access FAQs | DOE O 241.1C FAQs

How do I implement the new requirements of DOE O 241.1C?

What is STIP?

  • Required through a DOE Directive, but is a collaborative partnership.
  • Comprised of designated representatives from Headquarters Programs, DOE Operations & Field Offices, DOE Laboratories and technology centers, sites and facilities.
  • Effectively manages the DOE-sponsored STI, therefore ensuring that U.S. citizens are realizing a maximum return on investment, while ensuring information is appropriately marked and managed in accordance with any statutory access limitations.
  • Provides a framework for routine communication, coordination, and information exchange.

How does STIP Support DOE's STI Responsibilities and Objectives?

  • Provides accountability and historical record for labs' & offices' R&D and technological activities through submission to OSTI.
  • Ensures DOE's statutory mandates for STI management are met.
  • Enhances transparency of DOE research by maintaining robust STI programs.
  • Ensures appropriate announcement and availability restrictions are applied by the originating organization in accordance with statutory, regulatory, Executive order, and/or other Departmental requirements.
  • Saves research dollars by reducing duplication and enabling reuse of previous research; i.e., building blocks for others.
  • Extends the reach and impact of DOE's research as well as the research from each lab, site, office, and awardee.

What is STIP's Strategic Goal?

Creating, collecting, and sharing STI through a robust, collaborative, and innovative Program forged by all Departmental elements to facilitate access to STI and allow maximum use of the information resulting from DOE research and other technological activities.

What is Scientific and Technical Information (STI)?

Scientific and Technical Information (STI) is the result of knowledge arising from the R&D and/or related activities. STI is produced by those funded or supported by DOE, including federal researchers.

There are different types of STI. The R&D and/or related activities may produce more than one type. STI is communicated through various media (e.g., textual, multimedia, audiovisual, and digital) and include scientific/technical reports; scientific/technical conference papers, presentations, posters, or proceedings; journal articles/accepted manuscripts; scientific data; scientific software; books/monographs; thesis/dissertations; and technical workshop reports. STI does not include information related to the R&D such as preliminary analyses, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, communications with colleagues, laboratory samples, performance (management and oversight), or financial monitoring and reporting.

How is STI disseminated?

OSTI . . .

  • Develops and hosts search tools to make DOE R&D results available.
  • Partners with Google, Bing, and others to make DOEs deep database content accessible to surface web search engines.
  • Federates search across U.S. science agencies, providing a single-query portal.

What are the roles of representatives from Headquarters Programs, DOE Operations & Field Offices, DOE Laboratories and technology centers, sites and facilities?

STI Managers (STI Points of Contact at National Labs & Major Facilities)

The role of STI Managers is to stay abreast of the requirements of DOE's STI Program and coordinate the implementation of STIP related requirements. They serve as the main STIP POC for their respective site/facility participating in various DOE STIP activities. Normally, one STI Manager is appointed at each contractor site. While roles and responsibilities may vary from site to site, depending on the specific language of DOE contracts, the STI activities of STI Managers generally are the same.

Technical Information Officers (DOE Offices)

Technical Information Officers (TIO) serve as the principal DOE Departmental element POC and liaison with the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). TIOs represent their Departmental element within the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP). The TIOs must be familiar with the STI Programs within their DOE Office (given they have contracting financial assistance and/or acquisition activities) and for their major site/facility management contractor(s) STI Program to discern compliance with the DOE O 241.1C. They must maintain an up-to-date knowledge-base of the STI Program activities and provide timely feedback on issues as they emerge. While roles and responsibilities may differ, each major DOE element shall designate a TIO to perform STI-related activities.

STI Releasing Officials

Releasing Officials are designated by the GO/CO, TIO, and/or Contractor who will coordinate and confirm that the STI submitted to OSTI:

  1. Complies with all necessary reviews.
  2. Fulfills the reporting requirements based on the identification of STI for the financial assistance award, contract, and/or work that is authorized under the M&O and site/facility contract.
  3. Has the correct access controls/distribution limitation consistent with the data rights identified by the terms of the award/agreement.
  4. Includes the necessary data protection markings consistent with the access controls/distribution limitations in c.
  5. Is submitted with the accurate release date consistent with the award/agreement, if applicable.
  6. Includes all required metadata (see Attachment 5).
  7. Coordinates with the Awardee or author of STI if the STI needs to be updated/corrected; makes those updates in E-Link, as needed.
  8. Releases the STI in E-Link once the review/release process is complete.

Contract Officers and Contract Specialists (DOE Awarding Offices)

A Contracting Officer/Grants Officer (CO/GO) is an official of DOE certified and authorized to execute procurement instruments including acquisitions/contracts, and financial assistance awards on behalf of DOE and who is responsible for the business management and non-program aspects of the agreement.

Who are the representatives from Headquarters Programs, DOE Operations and Field Offices, DOE Laboratories and technology centers, sites and facilities?

See STIP Community for a full list of contacts.

What type of PDF should be used for submission?

OSTI prefers PDFs that meet one of the PDF/A compliance standards. PDF compliance helps ensure the PDF will be readable well into the future. Many recent PDF generating software packages have options for making PDF/A compliant files. PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2a, and PDF/A-3a achieve two of OSTI's goals of preservation and accessibility. Generally, a PDF/A-1a PDF has the following attributes:

  • All fonts used must be embedded. OSTI has experienced problems with some PDFs using exotic fonts not available on average equipment viewing the PDF.
  • The PDF should use device independent color.
  • The PDF should contain a minimum set of XMP metadata (handled by the PDF generating software).
  • Document hierarchy should be included.
  • The PDF should be tagged.
  • The PDF should use Unicode character maps.
  • The language needs to be specified for the entire document, each page, or each text object.
  • The PDF cannot be encrypted.
  • The PDF should not use LZW compression.
  • The PDF should not have embedded files (for PDF/A-1a only).
  • The PDF should not have external content references.
  • The PDF should not have multimedia content.
  • The PDF should not use JavaScript.
  • There should be no transparency (for PDF/A-1a only).

PDF/A-1a compliance requires more tags than other PDF compliance standards, when compared to PDF/A-1b, which is less strict, and PDF/A-2 and 3, which allow for more flexibility. However, meeting any of the PDF/A requirements alone is not enough to concur with OSTI's PDF best practices.

What is ORCID and its mission statement?

ORCID aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current researcher ID schemes. These identifiers, and the relationships among them, can be linked to the researcher's output to enhance the scientific discovery process and to improve the efficiency of research funding and collaboration within the research community.

Simply put, an ORCID number for an author is somewhat like a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a journal article or a dataset:

  • It serves as a way to uniquely distinguish one object from another - in this case, the objects are author/researcher names.
  • The ID number can be "resolved" [i.e. matched up to a name and bio] by the ORCID Registry, a central database of all the ID numbers ever assigned. Conversely, a personal name can be searched in the Registry if a user desires to know if an author has an ORCID. If the author does have one, the ORCID Registry will provide the number back to the inquiring user.
  • The ORCID number can be included when creative or scientific words are cited in published literature or databases. A long-term goal is that an Internet search on the ID number would infallibly retrieve all of that particular author's other works and none of anyone else's...even if another author's name happened to be exactly the same.

What is an ORCID Number?

Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) and the identifying number that it provides to authors. ORCID, Inc. formed in 2010 and officially launched, following beta testing with early adopters, in 2012. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) became an ORCID member in May of 2013.

Simply put, an ORCID number for an author is somewhat like a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for a journal article or a dataset:

  • It serves as a way to uniquely distinguish one object from another - in this case, the objects are author/researcher names.
  • The ID number can be "resolved" [i.e. matched up to a name and bio] by the ORCID Registry, a central database of all the ID numbers ever assigned. Conversely, a personal name can be searched in the Registry if a user desires to know if an author has an ORCID. If the author does have one, the ORCID Registry will provide the number back to the inquiring user.
  • The ORCID number can be included when creative or scientific words are cited in published literature or databases. A long-term goal is that an Internet search on the ID number would infallibly retrieve all of that particular author's other works and none of anyone else's...even if another author's name happened to be exactly the same.

ORCID's mission statement says:

ORCID aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in research and scholarly communications by creating a central registry of unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID and other current researcher ID schemes. These identifiers, and the relationships among them, can be linked to the researcher's output to enhance the scientific discovery process and to improve the efficiency of research funding and collaboration within the research community.

How can I obtain an ORCID ID?

An author wishing to obtain an ORCID ID can simply visit the ORCID website and apply. After answering basic questions, the author/researcher is then assigned a unique ORCID number. The process is free and fast. The ORCID number is 16 digits, such as 0000-0002-2235-1499. Note that there are no spaces in the character string.

OSTI’s E-Link includes researchers' ORCIDs. The ORCID number becomes part of the author information available to users for search and retrieval in DOE databases such as OSTI.GOV. The number will also travel with the author's name to products managed by OSTI such as Science.gov.

If you are a grantee, you may include your ORCID number when you submit your STI in E-Link. The author section of the metadata record asks for your last name, your first name, and your middle name or initial. Then, add your email address, your ORCID number, and your affiliation in the remaining author fields. If the ORCID number you enter is not in the correct format (0000-0000-0000-0000), the system will not allow you to use the "Submit" button. You will receive an error message instead so that you can re-enter the number correctly.

If you are a DOE employee or contractor at a DOE site or Office, you should ensure that your ORCID number is given to the STI Manager or Technical Information Officer for your organization. He or she will put it into the site database that provides records to OSTI. That will allow your site to include your ORCID number whenever it submits to OSTI any scientific and technical information which you have authored or co-authored.

For questions about ORCID numbers and how they are handled at OSTI, contact STIP@osti.gov.

How long will OSTI keep my STI record?

Full text of STI records submitted to OSTI are kept as permanent records. OSTI then holds responsibility for the record per governmental and NARA laws, regulations, and guidelines. Please note that if a submitter provides only metadata and URLs to full text, the submitter remains the record holder, not OSTI.

I found a box of DOE funded STI full-text documents, should I send to OSTI?

Often over the years, metadata only was sent to OSTI, so the OSTI Team is happy to work with you and confirm next steps for the STI. Please contact your STIP Liaison who will begin the process with OSTI Records Management.

How does OSTI handle FOIA requests for records?

OSTI regularly receives FOIA requests for STI documents. Please refer to OSTI's Freedom of Informaton Act (FOIA) page for further information and to contact OSTIs FOIA Officer with any particular questions.

How does OSTI protect limited records?

Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) metadata and full text submitted to OSTI is only searchable through Science Research Connection (SRC), which is only accessible by approved DOE employees and contractors. In SRC, a request to view the full text can be submitted for approval and the document will be made accessible through SRC, to the requester only, when a valid need-to-know is submitted and all access requirements are met.