Research Impacts of New

Federal Public Access Policies:

What You Need to Know

September 16th, 2025

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Bryan Gee

Michael Shensky

Access and download these slides at:

https://bit.ly/funder-policies-9-2025

UT-OSPO

UT Austin Open Source Program Office

Sloan grant number: G-2023-20944

Schedule for Today's Session

• Some historical context for current environment (10 minutes)
• DMPs (10 minutes)
• Publications (15 minutes)
• Data/Software (10 minutes)
• Q&A (15 minutes) - this segment will not be recorded

Recognizing the current climate

• Things are in flux
• Consensus on the FY26 budget is not close, FY25 ends in two weeks
• Agencies are changing requirements, are pausing/canceling solicitations, and some may themselves be eliminated
• This is the best info we have as of today (September 16th, 2025)

Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

August 7, 2025 Executive Order on Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

• Agency heads shall designate a senior appointee to create a process to review new funding opportunities and review discretionary grants to ensure consistency with agency priorities and the national interest
• Agency heads shall designate senior appointees to review discretionary awards on an annual basis for
• consistency with agency priorities
• substantial progress
• Senior appointees shall not routinely defer to the recommendations of others in reviewing funding opportunity announcements or discretionary awards, but shall instead use their independent judgment

Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

New principles for reviewing funding opportunity announcements and discretionary awards

• Must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.
• Shall not be used to fund, promote, encourage, subsidize, or facilitate the following types of initiatives:
• (A) racial preferences or other forms of racial discrimination by the grant recipient...
• (B) denial by the grant recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic
• (C) illegal immigration
• (D) any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.
• Should, all else being equal, be given to institutions with lower indirect cost rates
• Should be given to a broad range of recipients rather than to a select group of repeat players...
• Should be granted to applicants should commit to complying with administration policies, procedures, & guidance respecting Gold Standard Science
• Should include clear benchmarks for measuring success and progress towards relevant goals and a commitment to achieving Gold Standard Science
• To the extent institutional affiliation is considered in making discretionary awards, agencies should prioritize an institution’s commitment to rigorous, reproducible scholarship over its historical reputation or perceived prestige. As to science grants, agencies should prioritize institutions that have demonstrated success in implementing Gold Standard Science.

Oversight of Federal Grantmaking

Agency heads shall:

• Revise terms and conditions of existing discretionary grants to permit immediate termination for convenience, or clarify that such termination is permitted, including if the award no longer advances agency priorities or the national interest
• Ensure that such terms are included in all future discretionary grants
• Incorporate new terms and conditions into all future amendments to grant awards
• Insert in future discretionary grant agreements terms and conditions that:
• Prohibit recipients from drawing down general grant funds without affirmative authorization of the agency
• Require grantees to provide written explanations or support for requests for each drawdown

Gold Standard Science

May 23, 2025 Executive Order on Restoring Gold Standard Science

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Defines Gold Standard Science as:

1. Reproducible
2. Transparent
3. Communicative of error and uncertainty
4. Collaborative and interdisciplinary
5. Skeptical of its findings and assumptions
6. Structured for falsifiability of hypotheses
7. Subject to unbiased peer review
8. Accepting of negative results as positive outcomes
9. Without conflicts of interest

Ordered the OSTP director to issue guidance for agencies by June 22, 2025 on implementation of “Gold Standard Science” in the conduct and management of their respective scientific activities.

Ordered agency heads to report to the OSTP Director by August 22, 2025 on actions taken to implement Gold Standard Science at their agency - these agency plans are now in effect

Holdren and Nelson Memo comparison

Detailed ARL comparison of Holdren and Nelson memos

Funding agencies and sharing policies timeline

How will updated federal public access policies impact your research?

1. Data management plans are now expected with new grant applications
2. Publications must be made publicly available at time of publication - without embargo
3. Non-sensitive data must also be shared in a data repository

Current state of agency policies (9/16/25)

*Science Mission Directorate only

Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMPs)

• Some agencies have already been requiring data management plans for years as part of their grant application process (e.g, NIH, NSF)

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• These plans have typically been expected to provide information about:
• What data will be collected
• How the data will be stored and managed
• Who will be responsible for data management tasks
• How sensitive data will be protected
• How data will be shared

What Does the 2022 OSTP Memo Say about DMPs?

• Scientific data underlying peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded research should be:
• Made freely available and publicly accessible by default at the time of publication, unless subject to limitations
• Subject to federal agency guidelines for researcher responsibilities regarding data management and sharing plans
• Public access plans should outline the policies that federal agencies will use to establish researcher responsibilities on how federally funded scientific data will be managed and shared, including:
• Details describing any potential legal, privacy, ethical, technical, intellectual property, or security limitations on data access, use, and disclosure
• The specific online digital repositories where the researcher expects to deposit their relevant data, consistent with the agency’s guidelines.
• Federal agencies should allow researchers to include reasonable costs associated with submission, curation, management of data as allowable expenses in research budgets.

What do new agency plans say about DMPs?

• Submission requirements
• Plans for data management and sharing of the products of research, including preservation, documentation, and sharing of data, samples, physical collections, curriculum materials and other related research and education products should be described in the Special Information and Supplementary Documentation section of the proposal - NSF PAPPG 26-1 Draft
• Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMSPs) must be provided for the funded research following DOE and DOE sponsoring office guidelines. DOE
• USDA will require that an approved data management plan (DMP) accompany all scientific research that produces digital scientific research data assets - USDA

What do new agency plans say about DMPs?

• What needs to be included and how should DMPs be formatted
• There is no page limitation for this section of the proposal. The DMSP must be prepared using the tool under the “Data Management and Sharing Plan” section of http://research.gov - NSF PAPPG 26-1 Draft
• In the majority of cases, a DMSP will be required as part of the research proposal. In this case, the DOE reserves the right to reject, without merit review, any proposal that does not include a DMSP. ... Each sponsoring research office reserves the right not to select a proposal for funding if the DMSP fails to comply with the Department’s, the office's, and the solicitation’s requirements. ... - DOE
• Open Science and Data Management Plan (OSDMP): A document that describes how scientific information produced from a scientific activity will be shared and preserved in accordance with relevant policies. The OSDMP should include plans for sharing data, software, and publications. For most proposals, the OSDMP should not exceed a total length of two pages - NASA

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What do new agency plans say about DMPs?

• Assessment of submitted DMP
• Note that Plans are NOT part of scored peer review criteria unless specifically noted in the funding opportunity - NIH
• The DMSP will be reviewed as an integral part of the proposal, considered under Intellectual Merit or Broader Impacts or both, as appropriate for the scientific community of relevance - NSF PAPPG 26-1 Draft
• DMPs will be reviewed as part of the overall Office of Science research proposal merit review process - DOE

What do new agency plans say about DMPs?

• Reporting on compliance with submitted DMP
• Plans should be updated by researchers and reviewed by the NIH ICO during regular reporting intervals or sooner - NIH
• Reporting processes will include opportunities for researchers to provide information about the implementation status of and any updates to the DMSP - DOE

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• Compliance enforcement
• The Plan will become a Term and Condition of the Notice of Award. Failure to comply with the Terms and Conditions may result in an enforcement action, including additional special terms and conditions or termination of the award, and may affect future funding decisions. - NIH
• Current oversight of financial assistance allows for withholding or adjustment of funds at the end of each performance period if DMSPs are not appropriately followed. Failure to appropriately follow the DMSP may negatively influence future opportunities to receive DOE funding - DOE

Resource: DMPTool

• Compiles funder requirements, provides funder-specific templates
• Provides registry of publicly available DMPs (n > 1,500)
• https://dmptool.org/
• UT Libraries Research Data Services can review plan drafts, give feedback, provide DMPTool support, and meet with you to provide personalized consultation support

DMPTool Demonstration

Publication Policies

Publications: requirements

All peer-reviewed scholarly publications authored or co-authored by individuals or institutions resulting from federally funded research must be made freely available and publicly accessible without any embargo or delay after publication.

Publications: requirements

All peer-reviewed scholarly publications authored or co-authored by individuals or institutions resulting from federally funded research must be made freely available and publicly accessible without any embargo or delay after publication.

Myth: The government is requiring you to pay expensive APCs in order to make your research publicly available.

Publications: understanding different versions of articles

UT Libraries guide to Open Access: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa/home

Publications: understanding Open Access

UT Libraries guide to Open Access: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa/home

Publications: requirements

• Ways to make a publication immediately, publicly available:
• Publish Version of Record under Gold OA (author/institution pays) agreement
• Publish Version of Record under Hybrid OA (author/institution pays) agreement
• Publish Version of Record under Diamond OA (no one pays) agreement
• Self-deposit Author Accepted Manuscript in accepted repository by the official publication date of the Version of Record (Green OA, no one pays)
• Federal funders currently allow for publication APCs to be budgeted for in grants (in contrast to some private funders)
• NIH Director statement on limiting APCs
• Request for Information on NIH options for capping allowable costs for APCs

Publications: emerging conflicts with journals

• Springer Nature: “Springer Nature enables [NIH policy] compliance via gold OA [...] Publishing via the subscription route is not a viable option.”
• Wiley–Blackwell: “This policy goes against Wiley’s previous deposit procedures that deposited all NIH-funded articles at time of acceptance and made open access articles open on day of publication and non-OA articles open after a 12-month embargo period [...] There is an embargo requirement of 12-24 months before self-archiving the accepted version of an article is allowed.”
• Taylor & Francis: “Please note that immediate repository access to subscription-based articles is not compatible with the article sharing policies for most Taylor & Francis journals. NIH grantees should therefore choose a gold OA publishing option for their article.”

Publications: general government stance

• “To the extent permitted by law, the recipient or subrecipient may copyright any work that is subject to copyright and was developed, or for which ownership was acquired, under a Federal award. The Federal agency reserves a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for Federal purposes and to authorize others to do so. This includes the right to require recipients and subrecipients to make such works available through agency-designated public access repositories.”
• Source: 2 CFR 200.315
• Copyright Act of 1976

Publications: DOE’s stance

• “For peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts, DOE’s government license allows DOE to distribute copies of accepted manuscripts to the public. DOE’s government license is reserved ab initio by the terms and conditions of the relevant contract or agreement and takes precedence over a subsequent transfer of copyright by the DOE contractor or financial assistance recipient. Therefore, DOE-funded authors will not be in violation of any copyright by submitting such accepted manuscripts and metadata to OSTI.”
• “In making the accepted manuscript publicly available to fulfill DOE's public access commitment, it is not necessary to pay “author pays”/ “Gold OA” fees or article processing charges to enable public access to their research.
• “To implement immediate access to scholarly publications, DOE encourages use of the Green Open Access model, whereby the Federal employee, contractor, and financial assistance recipient submits the accepted manuscript to OSTI.”
• Source (2023)

Publications: NIH’s stance

• “By accepting NIH funding, the recipient grants to NIH, as the funding agency, a royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to reproduce, publish, or otherwise use the work for federal purposes and to authorize others to do so, which includes making Author Accepted Manuscripts publicly available in PubMed Central upon the Official Date of Publication.”
• “[...] compliance with the Policy may be achieved through either:
• Submission of the electronic version of the Author Accepted Manuscript to PubMed Central upon its acceptance for publication, for public availability without embargo upon the Official Date of Publication, or
• Submission of the Final Published Article to PubMed Central from journals or publishers with formal agreements with NLM, upon the Official Date of Publication, for public availability without embargo.”
• Source (2024)

Green OA offers a FREE compliance route

• Some funders require depositing the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in PubMed Central (PMC):
• AHRQ, CDC, EPA, FDA, NIH, NIST
• Some publishers automatically send (sent) OA full-text articles and non-OA AAMs to PMC but only if a 12-month embargo is allowed
• Most funders require their own funder-managed repository:
• DoD (Defense Technical Information Center), DOE (DOE PAGES), DOT (National Transportation Library Digital Repository), ED (ERIC), NASA (PubSpace), NOAA (NOAA Institutional Repository), NSF (PAR), USDA (PubAg), USGS (USGS Information Product Data System)
• Additional deposition of an AAM in an institutional or other third-party repository or in a preprint server is fine but is not a substitute for depositing in an agency-required repository

Publications: emerging conflicts with journals

• Right now, we are in a “wait and see” holding pattern
• How can researchers avoid conflicts?
• Check the agreements that UT has with certain publishers: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa/utsupport
• Do your research before submitting to a journal if you do not want to pay a gold OA APC
• Aim for journals that are diamond OA (no cost to anyone) or that unambiguously permit zero-embargo sharing of the AAM (e.g., AAAS portfolio, SAGE portfolio)
• Authors Alliance: https://www.authorsalliance.org/
• FAQ on NIH policy: https://www.authorsalliance.org/2025/06/06/the-nih-public-access-policy-qa-for-authors/

Data Policies

Data sharing: what constitutes data

“The recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications. Scientific data do not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, completed case report forms, drafts of scientific papers, plans for future research, peer reviews, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens.” (NIH)

Data sharing: requirements

All data supporting a peer-reviewed work must be made available by the official publication date of said work.

NIH and USDA also require any additional data, regardless of whether an associated publication is planned, in review, or not planned, to be shared by the end of the grant.

Data sharing: exemptions

• Physical specimens
• Restrictions imposed by third-party collaborators or providers (e.g., private co-funder, HIPAA-covered entities, data sourced from a third party)
• Legal prohibitions
• National security concerns
• Informed consent or existing non-informed consent do not permit open sharing
• Privacy or safety of research participants would be compromised or place them at greater risk of re-identification or suffering harm, and protective measures such as de-identification and Certificates of Confidentiality would be insufficient
• Endangerment of localities or organisms

UT Libraries guide to managing sensitive research data: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/sensitive-data

Data sharing: repository selection

• Some funders often/always require use of a funder-managed repository
• These requirements will usually be communicated in the grant solicitation or award notification
• Examples: NASA, NIH, NOAA, USGS
• Some funders do not indicate an express preference, although researchers should still seek to use a discipline-specific data repository over a generalist repository wherever possible
• Examples: IMLS, NEH, NSF
• For external repositories, agencies recommend consulting the “Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories for Federally Funded Research”
• Sharing data as supplemental information usually does not meet agency requirements
• Agencies do permit data publishing costs to be covered by grants in most instances

UT Libraries guide to picking data repositories: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/research-data-services/picking-a-repository

Resources: Texas Data Repository

• Built on the open source Dataverse Project
• Meets criteria for publishing federally funded data
• DOIs
• Versioning
• Restricted access
• Permits custom terms of use
• Retention period of 10 years (minimum)
• Directly managed by UT Libraries
• https://dataverse.tdl.org/dataverse/utexas

Data sharing: additional requirements

• Some agencies may have additional requirements for how data are shared regardless of which repository is used. Some examples:
• Use CC0 licensing for data without restrictions
• Publish data in non-proprietary formats
• Datasets must receive DOIs
• Authors must have ORCIDs
• Use certain discipline-specific metadata schemas
• Submitting metadata entries to an agency repository/catalogue, even when data are not deposited there

Software sharing

• Like journals, most funders do not require that associated research software be made publicly available, but there are clear indications that journals and funders are looking to implement software sharing policies
• Sharing software is a best practice as it ensures computational reproducibility in tandem with any data and other outputs
• Software is anything from 100 lines of R code to a complete program with a graphical user interface (GUI), as long as it tells a computer to do something

Software sharing: NASA

• All proposals must include a Software Management Plan (SMP)
• Software must be made freely available at the time of associated publication
• Software must be assigned a persistent identifier (PID); GitHub or similar platforms alone are not acceptable
• Exempts software that is restricted from release due to law, security, or intellectual property considerations or that is produced for the purpose of sale.

Software sharing: Gold Standard Science

• Department of Energy: “This [Public Access Plan] includes public access to peer-reviewed journal articles, scientific conference proceedings, scientific software, and the scientific research data underlying publications or otherwise generated by DOE-funded R&D.”
• NOAA: “NOAA will leverage NOAA’s Library Institutional Repository, National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), NOAA Open Data Dissemination (NODD), and other approved data repositories [...], to expand public access to NOAA-sponsored publications, scientific data, and software.”
• FDA: “[Transparency] requires detailed disclosure of experimental protocols, raw data, software tools, [...], facilitated through platforms such as open-access journals, public data repositories, and standardized reporting frameworks.”

UT Open Source Program Office (OSPO)

• Established in August 2023 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• The UT-OSPO is a partnership between TACC, ITT, the iSchool, & UT Libraries
• Focused on helping researchers progress along an open source participation pathway
• Resources:
• Consultations
• Workshops and training
• Best practice documents
• https://opensource.utexas.edu/

Upcoming “Getting Started with Open Source Software” session: 9/19, noon to 1 PM https://opensource.utexas.edu/events/getting-started-open-source-software

Resources

Resources: LibGuides

The new Federal Agency Public Access Requirements guide has been developed specifically to provide up-to-date information about new funder policies and requirements

https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/public-access/fapar

Resources: LibGuides

The new Gold Standard Science guide provides links to all associated orders, memos, and agency implementation plans

https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/public-access/gold-standard-science

Resources: Other LibGuides

• Copyright Crash Course: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/copyright
• Research Data Services: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/research-data-services
• Sensitive Research Data: https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/sensitive-data

Resources: Workshops

• Recurring each semester
• Various topics
• https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/data-and-donuts

• Open Scholarship Crash Course
• Slides posted at bit.ly/os-crash-course
• Next session being planned for May 2026

Resources: Consultations

Choosing a data repository

Working with nuanced data cases

Publishing research software

Writing a data management plan

Need to find your departmental liaison? https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/

Questions about OA policies and support? https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa

Survey

• Please share feedback with us so that we can make future versions of this workshop even better

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• Access the post-event survey at:

https://bit.ly/9-16-2025-session-survey

Wrap Up and Q&A

Bryan Gee, Open Research Coordinator for Data and Software

Email: bryan.gee@austin.utexas.edu

Consultation: https://libcal.lib.utexas.edu/appointments/openresearch

Topics: data repositories, data curation, Texas Data Repository

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Michael Shensky, Head of Research Data Services

Email: m.shensky@austin.utexas.edu

Consultation: https://libcal.lib.utexas.edu/appointments/researchdataservices

Topics: data management plans, open source research software

Recording will be stopped here for the Q&A portion of this session