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Federal Public Access Policies: DoE Policy

An overview of the current and future landscape of US Public Access Policies.

Current DoE Public Access Policy

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  • All unclassified or otherwise unrestricted peer-reviewed publications that are the result of DoE funding must be made publicly available in the DoE Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (DoE PAGES). Current policy allows for a 12-month embargo on publications.
  • Since 2015, all scientific research supported by DoE funding are required to have a Data Management and Sharing Plan to help increase access, where appropriate, to the data underlying scholarly publications. 

Updates to DoE Policy in Response to the Nelson Memo

All unclassified or otherwise unrestricted, peer-reviewed scholarly publications that are the result of DoE funding are required to be made publicly-available in the DOE Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (DoE PAGES). The major change to this policy that went into effect on October 1, 2024 is that these publications can no longer be embargoed for up to a year after publication. The DoE is also actively exploring methods to make these scholarly publications machine-readable to improve accessibility. 

As a result of the 2014 DoE Public Access Plan, scientific data underlying publications that are the result of DoE funds are to be made publicly-available (as appropriate) at the time of publication. For DoE solicitations beginning October 1, 2025, applicants will be required to meet new requirements for the Data Management and Sharing Plans (detailed in DoE Order 241.1C, Attachment 6). This will include discussing a timeline for sharing DoE-funded data not associated with publications as appropriate.  

Publications: When a publication is deposited into PAGES, the DoE already has a system in place to collect certain metadata. The agency also plans to identify gaps in metadata by mining the Acknowledgement and Affiliation fields from publications using bibliometric and citation sources (DoE Public Access Plan, p. 8). 


Scientific Data: Current policy allows for identifiers to be assigned to datasets when deposited, but the DoE plans to strengthen the infrastructure for collecting persistent identifiers and metadata associated with data. 


Researcher Digital Persistent Identifier: The DoE, leader of the U.S. Government ORCID consortium, requires all researchers supported by federal funds to obtain an ORCID, which is a researcher digital persistent identifier. The DoE plans to strengthen the capture of research persistent identifiers in association with publications, data, and metadata (2023 DoE Public Access Plan, p. 21).