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Federal Government Public Access Policies

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Federal Public Access Policies

Over the past 15 years or so, the federal government has been moving increasingly in the direction of public access to taxpayer funded research. NIH has required the sharing of journal articles based on NIH funded research since 2008. In 2013, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memo requiring the inclusion of data management plans for all grant proposals to agencies with at least $100 million in research funds. In August of 2022, OSTP released another memo which recommends that all federal agencies develop plans indicating how they will provide public access to the results of federally funded research.

This guide is intended to provide basic information about the federal government's plans for public access, and how the UT Libraries can help with compliance.

Materials from the 9/16/25 Federal Policy Changes Impacting Research Sharing Info Session

This session covered federal funding agency policy changes that have gone into effect or will be implemented in 2025 that may impact your research. We covered the expanded sharing requirements for publications, data, and software resulting from federally funded research, describe where researchers can find more information, and highlight the resources that are available at UT Austin to assist with compliance. We also discussed the commonalities and differences among individual research funding agency plans.

Library Guides on Specific Public Access Policies

As plans are released from funding agencies, the Libraries will create informational guides about compliance with major funding agency requirements. 

Head of Research Data Services

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Michael Shensky
(he/him)

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Generic License.