In August 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) published new policy guidance, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,” as an update to the 2013 memorandum “Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research.” The new guidance includes a number of updates, such as immediate public access to federally funded research and the embrace of information-integrity measures, including persistent digital identifiers. In a significant expansion over prior policy, this guidance applies to all federal agencies with extramural research and development expenditures.
In an effort to highlight the significant differences between the 2013 memorandum and the 2022 guidance, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published a comparison table of the two documents. This table breaks down the 2013 and 2022 OSTP public-access guidance into sections for a quick side-by-side comparison of 10 key components, including embargo period, data policies, formats, and metadata expectations.
As additional details of the OSTP guidance and resulting policies become available, ARL will engage its membership in drafting feedback and discussing institutional impact, as well as advocating on behalf of research libraries and their communities. We will also work with higher education associations to promote minimal researcher burden, policy harmonization, equitable access, and other key issues for higher education and libraries.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of research libraries in Canada and the US whose vision is to create a trusted, equitable, and inclusive research and learning ecosystem and prepare library leaders to advance this work in strategic partnership with member libraries and other organizations worldwide. ARL’s mission is to empower and advocate for research libraries and archives to shape, influence, and implement institutional, national, and international policy. ARL develops the next generation of leaders and enables strategic cooperation among partner institutions to benefit scholarship and society. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
