Presentation for Open Access Week, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa Library, October 20, 2015

1. Open Government Resources and
Government-Funded Open Mandates
GWEN SINCLAIR GSINCLAI@HAWAII.EDU
GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS & MAPS DEPARTMENT, UHM LIBRARY
ADJUNCT FACULTY IN UHM LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE PROGRAM

2. What I’ll talk about today
What are the research products of the U.S. government?
How do users access them?
Examples of government data that is not open
Examples of how government open data is being used
What kinds of research does the U.S. government fund?
Requirements for access to federally-funded research
Predictions about the future
Slides for this presentation: http://goo.gl/GCl2JW

3. Part 1: Government-
produced research

4. Research products of the U.S. gov’t
Activity:
Examine your publication and answer the following questions:
What is the subject matter?
Who was the publisher of the document?
What are the authors’ affiliations?

5. Dissemination of government research
(19th Century)
Reports of explorations
Scientific investigations
Type Example
Congressional documents Report of the expedition of the squadron of dragoons to
the Rocky Mountains during the summer of 1835 (24th
Congress, 1st session, House document 181)
Agency annual reports Omaha dwellings, furniture, and implements (Annual
report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1891-2)

6. Report of the expedition of the squadron of dragoons
to the Rocky Mountains during the summer of 1835
(24th Congress, 1st session, House document 181)

7. Omaha dwellings, furniture, and implements (Annual
report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1891-2)

8. Dissemination of government research
(20th Century)
Technical reports
Books
Conference papers
Circulars, bulletins
Agency journals
Commercially published
journals
Type Example
Bibliographies U.S. Department of Commerce bibliography of
technical reports
Lists of publications NASA scientific and technical reports for 1967
Agency catalogs EPA national publications catalog
Indexes Index to publications of the United States
Department of Agriculture 1936-1940
General catalogs U.S. government research reports
Announcements News releases, bulletins
Type Example
Bibliographies Selective bibliography in science and
engineering (Northwestern University)
Commercial indexes Applied science and technology index
Agency indexes Diabetes literature index
Databases Medline
Energy citations index

9. Dissemination of government research
(21st Century)
Technical reports
Books
Conference papers
Circulars, bulletins
Data
Journal articles
Type Example
Repositories EPA science inventory
Lists of publications Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory
morphology publications
Agency web sites USGS maps, imagery, and publications
Databases NCDC storm events database
USDA current research information system
Social media Twitter, YouTube
Type Example
Publisher web site
(abstracts are free)
Wiley journals
Aggregator EBSCOHost
Search interface Google Scholar

10. Acquisition of government research
BOOKS, TECHNICAL REPORTS, GENERAL
PUBLICATIONS, DATA
Library
Purchase or acquire from government agency
Purchase or download from NTIS
Purchase from U.S. Government Bookstore
Purchase through a vendor
Subscribe to a database
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Library
Interlibrary loan
Purchase directly from publisher
Ask a friend

11. National Technical Information Service
(NTIS)
Publication Board, established in Department of Commerce in 1945 (Later Office of Declassification
and Technical Services)
Distributed captured German documents to the military and U.S. companies
Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information established in 1964
Published U.S. Government Research, which announced reports of research and development
released by the armed services, Atomic Energy Commission, and other agencies
Published Government-wide Index to Federal Research and Development Reports
NTIS established as self-supporting agency under Department of Commerce in 1970
American Technology Preeminence Act of 1991:
required agencies to transfer unclassified scientific, technical, and engineering information which
results from federally funded research and development to NTIS
Required NTIS to cover its operational costs through fees

12. National Technical Reports Library
Currently contains records for over 2.5 million government reports
Users can purchase copies of information products in print, microform, or PDF
Basic search interface is free
Full version of NTRL costs $2,100-$11,200 for institutions; $200 for individuals
30% of reports are available in full text as free PDF downloads
for public users of the database, there is a 10-article download limit per session
If you’re in a foreign country, you must pay for a subscription to view full text documents

13. NTIS woes
By 1995, losing money because of increasing availability of government
reports online
In 2000, Congress proposed eliminating NTIS and transferring its
repository to Library of Congress
NTIS currently loses money on sales of publications
Expenses covered through services to government agencies (data
hosting, web site development)
75% of NTIS’s holdings are available from other public sources
NASA Technical Reports Server
SciTech Connect
Defense Technical Information Center

14. Data.gov and the Open Government
Initiative (2013)
Executive Order 13642, “Making Open and Machine
Readable the New Default for Government Information”
OMB issued the Open Data Policy:
Ordered agencies to make data freely available through
Data.gov, administered by the General Services
Administration
Required agencies to inventory and catalog their data
assets
Required agencies to publish a list of their data assets
that are or could be made public
Required agencies obtain public input to facilitate and
prioritize the release of datasets

15. Examples of government information
that is not open
DoD media library
Contains over 1 million photos, videos, audio
logs and documents
Full search limited to DoD users
Public access sites only cover the past 10
years

16. Government information not subject to
open government directives
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records)
Established in 1998
Access to case information costs $0.10 per page,
capped at $3.00
If usage does not exceed $15 in a quarter, fees are
waived
Not included:
Pre-2003 bankruptcy case documents
Criminal case documents older than Nov. 1, 2004
Confidential information is redacted
E-Government Act of 2002: does it require free
access?

17. Government information not subject to
open government directives
Congress: what’s open, what’s not
Open Not open
Votes Congressional Research
Service reports
Lobbying disclosure forms Committee prints
Floor debate Congressional hearings

18. Examples of
non-profit uses
of government
open data
Capitol Words
http://capitolwords.org
Text analysis of
Congressional Record

19. Examples of
non-profit uses
of government
open data
Open Checkbook
https://opencheckbook.
demo.socrata.com
Which government
agencies spend the
most money? Who is
receiving that money
and what are they
spending it on?

20. Examples of
non-profit uses
of government
open data
Surging Seas
http://sealevel.climatecentral
.org
Visualization tool for sea level
rise in the U.S. based on data
from the National Elevation
Dataset of the U.S. Geological
Survey

21. Examples of for-
profit uses of
government
open data
Google Patent Search
https://patents.google.com/
Uses U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office data
Value added services include
optical character recognition to
make the text of patents fully
searchable, an integrated
viewer for patent images, and
proprietary search algorithms.

22. Examples of for-
profit uses of
government
open data
Zillow http://www.zillow.com
Uses American Community
Survey data from the Census
Bureau

23. Predictions
Increasing availability of reports and data on agency web sites
Increasing availability of digitized historical scientific and technical literature in free repositories
TRAIL (Technical Report Archive and Image Library)
National Agricultural Library
USGS Publications Warehouse
Increasing commercial publication or reissuance of government research
Increasing development of APIs using government research products
NTIS will cease to exist
Lack of support for centralized repositories

24. Part 2: Government-
funded research

25. The federal government’s grantmaking,
19th and early 20th century
Grants to states (e.g., land grant universities)
Research done in government laboratories by government researchers or by contractors such
as universities, hospitals, research institutions, and companies, e.g.,
Office of Naval Research
National Applied Mathematics Laboratory of National Bureau of Standards
Public Health Service hospitals
Bell Laboratories
Research published in government documents, conference proceedings, or journal articles
Data retained by government agency or contractor

26. Grantmaking authority established in enabling legislation for agencies
Annual reports on scientific progress required
No indication of where the results are to be published
No requirement that results be published in a particular forum
No requirement to deposit data
Research results disseminated through:
Conferences
Publications
Agency-published reporting journals, e.g., Cancer chemotherapy reports
Agency-published indexes to research, e.g., Public Health Service’s Research grants index
The federal government’s grantmaking,
1930s forward

27. NIH Public Access Policy
Originally issued by NIH as a policy in 2005
Legislatively mandated in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008
SEC. 218. The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators
funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine’s
PubMed Central an electronic version of their final peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance
for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of
publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner
consistent with copyright law.
Research Works Act, introduced in 2011, would have overturned NIH’s policy, but it was
withdrawn by its sponsors.

28. Fair Access to Science and Technology
Research Act (FASTR)
Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006
Died in committee
Federal Research Public Access Act of 2009 (FRPAA)
reintroduced in each session of Congress from 2009-2012
Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) introduced in 2013
Approved by Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, July 2015
Requires each federal agency with extramural research expenditures of over $100 million to
develop a federal research public access policy
Public access policies applicable to agency researchers and agency-funded researchers
Requires each federal agency to submit an annual report on its federal research public access
policy to Congress

29. Office of Science and Technology Policy
memorandum, February 22, 2013
A We the People petition was presented to the White House in May 2012 to “Require free access
over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research.”
Office of Science and Technology Policy responded with a memorandum that:
Directed executive branch agencies that have at least $100 million in annual R & D expenditures to
develop public access plans
12-month embargo period
Directed agencies to develop interfaces for retrieval of data
Required free access to metadata and the development of data management plans by grantees
Acknowledged that proprietary interests, confidential business information, and intellectual
property rights must be respected
Developers of public access plans must solicit views from stakeholders

30. Public access plans
Department of Energy
Establish Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (PAGES)
portal
PAGES will provide metadata and abstracts “in a way that is
open, readable, and available for bulk download”
PAGES will “facilitate analysis of peer-reviewed scholarly
publications directly arising from research funded by DOE”
All research proposals selected for DOE funding must include a
Data Management Plan

31. Public access plans
National Science Foundation
Requires that NSF-funded research results be deposited in a public
access compliant repository [PAGES];
Requires that research publications be available after 12-month embargo
period
Requires the provision of free metadata
Requires research to be reported in annual and final reports during the
period of the award with a unique persistent identifier that links to the full
text of the publication
NSF already requires applicants to submit a data management plan

32. Public access plans
Department of Defense plan
Requires digitally formatted scientific data resulting from unclassified,
publicly releasable research supported wholly or in part by DoD funding
to be publicly accessible
Data will not be publicly releasable if release would compromise the
ability to file for intellectual property protection on any invention arising
from the data
Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) will be the search interface
and repository

33. Predictions
Bills mandating open access for federally funded research will not succeed
Public access plans will continue to govern access to grant-funded research
Partnerships will be needed to host research publications and data due to lack of federal funds
for these functions
New open-access publishing venues will be developed
Journal articles will be less important

34. Questions?
Thank you for coming!
Slides for this presentation: http://goo.gl/GCl2JW