Publishing, Scholarly Communication, and Open Access: Federally Funded Public Access Mandates

In August 2022, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research calling on federal agencies to make “articles resulting from all U.S. federally funded research freely available and publicly accessible by default in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay after publication.” See more on these directives and learn more on Public Access Mandates for Federally Funded Research.    (The August 2022 directive builds upon the February, 2013, the OSTP and the White House directive requiring federally funded agencies receiving more than $100M in R&D to develop public access policies for peer-reviewed articles resulting from federal funding.)  

This updated policy guidance will eliminate the current 12-month embargo period and make articles and the underlying data needed to validate their results available in machine-readable formats. The memorandum also contains key provisions that aim to promote equity in the publishing of and access to federally funded research as well as to improve scientific research integrity. The memorandum applies to all U.S. federal agencies with R&D expenditures, significantly expanding the scope of current federal policy.

Time Frame for Implementation

The time frame for implementation of the memorandum has two components:

• First, agencies must develop new public plans or update existing ones for submission to OMB and OSTP. Agencies that were subject to the 2013 Holdren Memo and already have public access plans have a shorter timeline and must submit their plans within the next six months (180 days). The remaining agencies have a full year (360 days) to submit their plans for review.
• Second, once OMB and OSTP review their plans, agencies must publish their final policy implementation plans by December 31st, 2024, with an effective date no later than one year after the publication of the agency plan. We note that this could mean the plans from agencies subject to the Holdren Memo could go into effect sooner than December 31st, 2024.

All new and updated agency public access plans for publications and data will go into effect no later than 2025. As noted earlier, the new scientific research integrity provisions of agency public access plans will go into effect starting in 2027.

Follow this page for updates and information related to each agency.

The University of Illinois at Chicago University Library provides consultations on article and data management planning and compliance with these public access mandates.

For questions or details about the specific policies and requirements, email digitialscholarship@uic.edu email Sandy De Groote, Scholarly Communication Librarian (sgroote@uic.edu) or contact your liaison librarian.