Complying with funder public access and open access mandates

Agencies that sponsor research are interested in maximizing the value of that research. Increasingly, this means requiring the recipients of grants to make the results of their research – both scholarly articles and the data supporting them – freely available to the public.

• View list: of federal granting agencies with pubic access / open access requirements.
• If funding sponsor is not a federal agency check the Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies (ROARMAP).

*Read more about US Government Public Access Policies

*View Open Access guide for list of agencies and requirements.

SPONSOR-SPECIFIC REPOSITORIES

Some agencies may require investigators utilize sponsor-specific repositories for making research publically available; such as PubMed Central at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or PubAg at the Department of Agriculture, or a shared repository as in the case of the National Science Foundation (NSF) which utilizes the Departments of Energy’s DOE PAGES.

NON-SPONSOR-SPECIFIC REPOSITORIES
Alternatively, investigators may be asked to identify and select for themselves an appropriate repository. In these instances, investigators should consider Oakland University’s institutional repository, OUR@Oakland, managed by OU Libraries. This system can be used for data as well as articles, and it will provide a persistent URL you can send to publishers and long-term storage of your data and publications.

DISCIPLINE-SPECIFIC REPOSITORIES

• AgEcon: Agriculture and Applied Economics
• Astrophysics Data System - Astrophysics
• ArXiv - (pre-prints) - Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance, Statistics
• CiteSeer - Computer and Information Science
• PhilPapers - Philosophy
• RePEc - Economics
• Social Science Research Network - Social Sciences

DATA repositories

• Dryad - Biosciences, medicine
• ICPSR -  Social and Behavioral sciences
  **For more on a data see the Research Data Management guide
  

What Should You Do?

1. Check for funder access and sharing policies before you apply for grants.

How long is the embargo period? Six months, a year. Is this accepted for your research and university policies?

*View the Open Access guide for more information about specific funder policies..

2. Review the copyright transfer agreement or check the publisher/journal web site to confirm that the publisher allows you to comply with the public access / open access policy. Look for sections that allow you to check off your type of funding agency policy or mention deposit of your peer-reviewed manuscript in an institutional or public repository.

3. Do not sign any agreements that will not allow you to comply with the public access policy of your funders.

4. Retain a copy of your final, peer-reviewed manuscript, after changes but before publisher formatting. You will probably need this to comply with public access policies. This is a pre-print you can deposit in OU's institutional repository or a mandated repository.

What about Data sharing requirements?

1. Data that supports tables and figures in your publications will need to be publicly accessible. There may also be requirements for how long you need to make your data available.

2. Check with your funder and grant description for data deposit requirements. You may be required to use a specific repository, or you may just need to provide the funder with a citation.

*For more information view the Research Data Management guide

Where to I get help?

OU Libraries can help you comply with these policies. OU Libraries manages OU's institutional repository, OUR@Oakland which can be used to make articles or data available to the public.

We offer consultations on your copyright transfer agreements, open access publishing or data sharing compliance.

Content borrowed and adapted by permission from Virginia Commonwealth U. guides.