Financial Awardees/Grantees - Scientific and Technical Software

Scientific and Technical Software (PDF 614 KB)

Scientific and Technical Software - Grantees Page 1

STI Product Type Factsheet for Financial Assistance Awardees/Grantees:

Scientific and Technical Software

ABOUT STI

In the course of performing research and development (R&D) and other scientific and technological work, researchers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) produce scientific and technical information (STI) to document and disseminate their findings.

STI includes products such as journal articles, technical reports, conference presentations, books, and more. Through the Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP), the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) collaborates with people across the DOE complex, including Headquarters programs, field offices, national laboratories, and other facilities. The STIP partnership ensures that the results of DOE- funded work are identified, disseminated, and preserved. Thus, OSTI collects STI produced across the DOE laboratory and facility complex as well as from financial assistance recipients.

DEFINITION

Scientific/technical software is computer software* that has been developed and/or modified during work supported by DOE. As a form of STI, it is a result of research and development or other science and technology work and is a stable, usable version expected to be useful to others (that is, its use is not limited to a single site due to specific technology or equipment). As DOE's software management facility, OSTI manages DOE CODE, the DOE software services platform and search tool for DOE-funded code.

*The terms "software" and "code" are used interchangeably.

SUBMISSIONS

Scientific/technical computer software is to be announced per instructions provided in the award package and the Federal Assistance Reporting Requirements Checklist (DOE F4600.2). Software may be submitted and announced through DOE CODE (https://www.osti.gov/doecode). The record has basic metadata field requirements; however, other optional/non-mandatory data fields should be included during announcement when possible.

DOE CODE offers two paths to provide code. Users can (1) Submit code to DOE CODE, and (2) Announce code to DOE for official review and release through DOE CODE. Codes in later stages of development are the primary use case for the latter functionality. Project Type, as follows, determines when uploading of code is required. Source code is required when announcing codes with Project Type Closed Source (CS) and with Project Type Open Source, No Publicly Available Repository (OS-NPAR). For Project Type CS, a compiled binary may be provided as a last resort when the code is not available. The code is required for preservation purposes only; i.e., not for distribution by OSTI.

STI AVAILABILITY

OSTI.GOV is the primary search tool for DOE science, technology, and engineering research and development results and the organizational hub for information about the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information. OSTI.GOV makes discoverable over 70 years of research results from DOE and its predecessor agencies. Research results include journal articles/accepted manuscripts and related metadata; technical reports; scientific research datasets and collections; scientific software; patents; conference and workshop papers; books and theses; and multimedia. OSTI.GOV contains over 3 million records, including citations to 1.6 million journal articles, 1.1 million of which have digital object identifiers (DOIs) linking to full-text articles on publishers' websites. OSTI.GOV provides access to this DOE STI by offering numerous easy-to-use search capabilities and customization options; and for the DOE community, additional citation information is available to help researchers evaluate article impact and find related research.

As the DOE software services platform and search tool for DOE-funded code, DOE CODE provides functionality for collaboration, archiving, and discovery of scientific and business software.

OSTI.GOV and DOE CODE are included in the Federal science portal Science.gov (https://www.science.gov). Science.gov, hosted by OSTI, offers free access to research and development (R&D) results and scientific and technical information from more than 60 databases from scientific organizations across 13 federal agencies.

OSTI also works in close collaboration with Google and others, using Sitemap Protocols and other information industry standards to facilitate the discovery of DOE STI through widely used search engines.