Open Data

image © Matthew WhiteheadThe next SPARC Open Access Meeting, themed “Convergence,” will convene March 3–4, 2014, in Kansas City. The past year has seen growing momentum in the areas of open access, open data, and open educational resources. As the push for greater openness continues, these three fronts are converging in interesting and potentially transformative ways. Join us as leaders from the library community, academia, industry, student community, and other research avenues discuss how open access, open data, and open educational resources are intersecting, and the impact this convergence might have on research and discovery. The meeting is designed to emphasize collaborative actions that stakeholders can take to positively impact publishing, policy, digital repositories, author rights, and licensing.

The Association of American Universities (AAU), the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and ARL have drafted a proposal in response to the OSTP memo: The SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE).

 share-proposal-07june13.pdf

The proposal begins:

Research universities are long-lived and are mission-driven to generate, make accessible, and preserve over time new knowledge and understanding. Research universities collectively have the assets needed for a national solution for enhanced public access to federally funded research output. As the principal producers of the resources that are to be made publicly available under the new White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)[1] memorandum, and that are critical to the continuing success of higher education in the United States, universities have invested in the infrastructure, tools, and services necessary to provide effective and efficient access to their research and scholarship. The new White House directive provides a compelling reason to integrate higher education’s investments to date into a system of cross-institutional digital repositories that will be known as SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE)...

Comments and questions about the draft SHARE proposal (PDF) are welcome—please send e-mail to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

image © Niklas WikströmARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) have drafted a proposal, “SHared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE)” (PDF), in response to the recent White House directive on public access to federally funded research and data.

image © Tom LohdanThis week, the National Research Council (NRC) is hosting four days of discussion on the recent White House memo, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research” (PDF). NRC is conducting these sessions to garner input from a wide variety of perspectives on behalf of many federal agencies. ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) presented joint statements on “Expanded Public Access to Data” (PDF) and “Expanded Public Access to Publications” (PDF).

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries presented a joint statement on expanded public access to data to the National Research Council at the National Academy of Science Forum on May 16, 2013.

 univ-lib-statement-public-access-data-16may13.pdf

The Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of Research Libraries presented a joint statement on expanded public access to publications to the National Research Council at the National Academy of Science Forum on May 14, 2013.

 univ-lib-statement-public-access-publications-14may13.pdf

image © Tom LohdanToday President Obama signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to make government data more accessible to the public. Under the terms of the Executive Order, "Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information," a new Open Data Policy (PDF) released today establishes a framework to help agencies implement the principles of effective information management throughout the data life cycle to promote interoperability and openness. Whether or not particular information can be made public, agencies can apply this framework to all information resources to promote efficiency and produce value.

On February 22, 2013, John P. Holdren, Director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, issued a memorandum directing federal research funding agencies with R&D budgets of $100 million or more to develop a plan within six months to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the federal Government.

image © Tom LohdanToday the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released a two-page statement by David E. Shulenburger calling on the research university community to provide input to the US Government for increasing access to the results of federally funded research.

On April 17, 2013, the Association of American Universities (AAU), Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), and Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released this two-page statement by David E. Shulenburger calling on the research university community to provide input to the US Government for increasing access to the results of federally funded research.

 expanded-public-access-a-new-era-with-new-challenges-15apr13.pdf