More Like this

1. The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis

   Steinhart, G; Skinner, K (October 2024, Zenodo)

   Beginning on or before 31 December 2025, all recipients of United States federal research funding will be required to make their federally funded scholarly outputs, including scientific data, freely available via public access venues with no delays or embargos. This paper focuses on research data as one of the key scholarly output types impacted by the requirements outlined in the Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research issued by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), commonly called the “Nelson memo”. This paper sets out working definitions of four key terms: cost, price, reasonable, and allowable. Using these terms, we describe some of the pathways research data take to final publication, and summarize some of the extensive body of research on the costs of research data curation and sharing. In the process, we look at cost modeling experimentation in the fields of research data management and digital preservation to consider what might be relevant from their approaches. 

   more » « less
2. The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis

   Steinhart, G; Skinner, K (October 2024, Zenodo)

   Beginning on or before 31 December 2025, all recipients of United States federal research funding will be required to make their federally funded scholarly outputs, including scientific data, freely available via public access venues with no delays or embargos. This paper focuses on research data as one of the key scholarly output types impacted by the requirements outlined in the Memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research issued by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), commonly called the “Nelson memo”. This paper sets out working definitions of four key terms: cost, price, reasonable, and allowable. Using these terms, we describe some of the pathways research data take to final publication, and summarize some of the extensive body of research on the costs of research data curation and sharing. In the process, we look at cost modelling experimentation in the fields of research data management and digital preservation to consider what might be relevant from their approaches. 

   more » « less
3. Researcher and Institutional Impact of Data Management and Sharing Policies

   Carlson, Jake (December 2023, CNI)

   The last 15 years have seen a marked growth of data management and sharing policies among federal agencies in the US and Canada. While these policies have an undeniable impact in terms of increased publicly available datasets, they have also impacted the research practices of funded researchers and the services and infrastructure provided by institutions. Researchers and institutions alike share the responsibility to align practices with funding agency requirements concerning data management and sharing, but each stakeholder group has responded in ways that may not align with one another. This presentation delves into research resulting from the National Science Foundation-funded Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative and provides a comprehensive comparative analysis of services and infrastructure of six academic institutions, as well as an overview of the overall impact of these policies for researchers and institutions. Insights into services, infrastructure, and impact can lead to the creation of streamlined pathways for enhancing institutional efficiencies in data management and sharing. 

   more » « less
4. Disciplinary and institutional diversity of federally funded academic research on climate solutions in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0166  

   Burrage, April; Goldstein, Anna; Carter, Tim (October 2023, Environmental Research Letters)

   Abstract To meet the demands of technological change required for climate change mitigation, academic research must cover a broad range of climate solutions. Diverse participation in this research is important because research shows that a variety of backgrounds and problem-solving approaches are important to solving complex problems such as climate change. In our study, we examine the discplinary and institutional diversity of federal funding for academic research on climate solutions (ARCS) in the United States. We identify $1.42 billion in federal funding for ARCS in fiscal years 2019 and 2020. Our findings reveal that 85% of federal ARCS grants are awarded to Principal Investigators in engineering and the natural sciences. Additionally, institutions classified as having high research activity (R1s) receive over 60% of the ARCS funding per student. Tribal institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and Hispanic Serving Institutions collectively receive only $109.20 in ARCS funding per student, compared to $334.30 per student for other institution types. These disparities in federally funded ARCS grants are, in part, a consequence of the absence of policies that promote interdisciplinary collaboration and broader participation in academic research. We discuss the policy implications that have contributed to the identified inequities in ARCS funding and current policies that could enhance the distribution of ARCS in the future. We propose strategies for federally funded ARCS to support an equitable energy transition that addresses the needs of contemporary society and beyond. 

   more » « less
5. Pathways to Data: From Plans to Datasets

   https://doi.org/10.1109/JCDL52503.2021.00077  

   Bennett, Anastasia; Sutherland, Will; Tian, Yubing; Finn, Megan; Acker, Amelia (September 2021, 2021 ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL))

   What is the relationship between Data Management Plans (DMPs), DMP guidance documents, and the reality of end-of-project data preservation and access? In this short paper we report on some preliminary findings of a 3-year investigation into the impact of DMPs on federally funded science in the United States. We investigated a small sample of publicly accessible DMPs (N=14) published using DMPTool. We found that while DMPs followed the National Science Foundation's guidelines, the pathways to the resulting research data are often obscure, vague, or not obvious. We define two “data pathways” as the search tactics and strategies deployed in order to find datasets. 

   more » « less