Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to Results of USDA

Implementation Plan to Increase Public

Access to Results of USDA-funded

Scientific Research

November 7, 2014

United States Department of Agriculture

Revision History

Version

Date

Purpose

August 18, 2013

Initial submission to OSTP and OMB

1.1

May 20, 2014

Respond to comments from OSTP and OMB

1.2

November 7, 2014

Respond to comments from OSTP and OMB

Table of Contents

I. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................... 3

II. Public Access to Scholarly Publications .......................................................................................................... 4

A. Policy .......................................................................................................................................................... 4

B. Business Processes, Procedures and Resources ......................................................................................... 6

C. Information Systems and Automation ....................................................................................................... 8

D. Outreach, Education and Training ........................................................................................................... 11

III. Public Access to Digital Scientific Data ........................................................................................................ 13

A. Policy ........................................................................................................................................................ 13

B. Business Processes, Procedures and Resources ....................................................................................... 16

C. Information Systems and Automation ..................................................................................................... 20

D. Outreach, Education and Training ........................................................................................................... 22

I. Introduction

This plan describes USDA’s approach to increase access to scholarly publications and digitally

formatted scientific data resulting from unclassified research results supported wholly or in part by

USDA funds, to the extent feasible and consistent with law; agency mission; resource constraints;

and U.S. national, homeland, and economic security. The plan is consistent with all policies and

requirements set forth in the OSTP Public Access memorandum (February 22, 2013), and makes

provisions to ensure that implementation of the plan:

 Contributes, in the long run, to raising the profile and reputation of the food, agricultural,

and natural resources as providers of significant contributions to many areas of scientific

innovation and value to society;

 Proceeds in close coordination with other science agencies and partnering organizations;

 Maintains the highest level of effective funding for science that resource constraints,

agency mission, and consistency with the law allow;

 Minimizes the burden on the scientific community, including researchers, professional

societies, and publishers;

 Allows flexibility in pursuit of disparate agency missions, operating models, stakeholder

needs, and meeting the evolving expectations in the scientific community regarding access

to scientific results;

 Provides public access to scientific results, without charge;

 Supports governance of and best practices for managing scientific results across USDA;

 Ensures effective access to and reliable preservation of scholarly publications resulting

from USDA funds for research, development, and education; and

 Preserves and increases the use of research results to enhance scientific discovery.

Four categories of tasks will be carried out in a logical and practical manner:

 Policy

 Business processes, procedures, and resources

 Information systems and automation

 Outreach, education and training

Some of the above tasks are incremental extensions to programs already in place at USDA. Each

category of tasks will be implemented in three phases: Phase I (2015), Phase II (2016), Phase III

(2017 and beyond).

II. Public Access to Scholarly Publications

This section of the plan describes USDA’s approach to increase public access to scholarly

publications resulting from unclassified research results supported wholly or in part by USDA

funds. As noted in the Introduction, the plan is consistent with all policies and requirements set

forth in the OSTP Public Access memorandum (February 22, 2013).

A. Policy

The development of a departmental policy on public access to scholarly publications is USDA’s first

step to ensure compliance with federal laws, executive orders, directives, and policies. The policy

enhances innovation and competitiveness by maximizing the potential to create new business

opportunities. It will accelerate scientific breakthroughs and innovation as well as enhance

economic growth and job creation. The policy serves as a roadmap for mission area and/or

individual USDA agency compliance, and sometimes serves as a charge for mission areas and/or

USDA agencies to undertake their own implementation.

In 2011, the Chief Scientist of the USDA established a Scientific Data Management Committee

(SDMC) under the USDA Science Council. The USDA Science Council provides direction and

guidance to the SDMC. The SDMC:

 Provides a platform for USDA agencies to collaborate through meetings, workshops and

working groups.

 Reviews scientific data management policies and strategies of other Federal agencies to

gain insight into scientific data management issues and practices that are relevant to USDA.

 Surveys USDA agencies’ scientific data management policies, strategies, and plans.

 Develops a USDA public access policy to guide the creation, collection, organization,

management, dissemination, and preservation of scholarly publications resulting from

USDA funds.

 Establishes a USDA implementation plan for public access to research results, including

scholarly publications and digital scientific datasets.

 Periodically assesses progress and determines whether course corrections are needed.

The USDA adopts a systematic approach to develop and implement a public access policy for

scholarly publications that includes:

 Establishment of an iterative process of policy design, planning, implementation,

evaluation/impact assessment, and policy redesign.

 Working in full and open consultation with stakeholders, including other federal organizing

bodies, to maintain and improve this public access policy.

 Establishing a file download monitoring mechanism, enforcing a practical file download

limit, and posting appropriate fair use policies to help prevent, to the extent feasible, the

unauthorized mass redistribution of scholarly publications.

The USDA Public Access Policy for scholarly publications will apply to any manuscript that:

 Is peer-reviewed; and

 Is accepted for publication in a journal on or after the USDA approval of a final public

access policy; and

 Arises from USDA funds, as defined in relevant OMB circulars A-21 and A-11, on or after

the USDA public access policy’s effective date. Extramural projects with previously

established USDA funding instruments lacking a public access requirement are exempt

unless amended, but are encouraged to follow the policy.

The USDA public access policy for scholarly publications will require that authors submit to the

USDA public access archive system all final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that meet the

above criteria once the manuscript is accepted for publication. In lieu of the final peer-reviewed

manuscript, USDA will accept the final published article, provided the author has the right to

submit the published version. The USDA will ensure easy search and download of scholarly

publications resulting from USDA funds without charge no later than 12 months following

publication.

Key Milestones:

Phase I (2015)

 Draft policy – Develop a draft public access policy for scholarly publications resulting from

USDA funds. USDA has developed a draft policy that was approved by the USDA Science

Council in March 2013.

 Stakeholder inputs – Solicit and collect stakeholder inputs. USDA and other federal

agencies participated in a public consultation hosted by the National Academy of Sciences

in May 2013. Thirty-nine stakeholders were invited, including the Association of Public and

Land-grant Universities, Entomological Society of America, and many others. Additional

transparent processes will be established to solicit views from stakeholders including

federally funded researchers, universities, libraries, publishers, users of federally funded

research results, and civil society groups.

 Approved policy – Finalize the public access policy for scholarly publications and obtain the

approval of the USDA secretary.

Phase II (2016)

 Policy in effect in 2016 – The policy will be in effect on January 1, 2016. Implementation

will be prospective and, as noted above, unless approved by all of the authors and

contributors. Extramural projects with previously established USDA funding instruments

lacking a public access requirement are exempt unless amended, but are encouraged to

follow the policy.

 Collect comments – Continuously solicit and collect stakeholder inputs and lessons learned.

Phase III (2017 and beyond)

 Revise policy to incorporate comments – Work in full and open consultation with

stakeholders to continuously improve the public access policy.

B. Business Processes, Procedures and Resources

The OSTP policy directive will dramatically change the way agencies, other organizations, and

individual researchers conduct both business and science. The USDA public access policy for

scholarly publications establishes major implementation requirements to which USDA programs,

offices, and procedures will adhere when addressing the planning, submission, management,

access, and preservation of scholarly publications. USDA will adopt a systematic approach to

implement the public access policy that will:

 Explore new approaches and partnerships with authors, federal agencies, publishers,

publishing organizations such as CrossRef

and FundRef

, and other stakeholders to obtain

final peer-reviewed manuscripts or published articles.

 Ensure that the public can read, download, and analyze in digital form final peer reviewed

manuscripts or final published documents without charge no later than 12 months

following publication.

 Establish terms of use that require anyone downloading a publication or other documents

agrees to properly attribute any subsequently used reference or quotation. The agreement

will include reference to the appropriate legal consequence of non-compliance.

 Provide a mechanism for stakeholders to petition for changing the 12 month embargo

period for a specific field by presenting clear evidences demonstrating that the USDA

implementation plan would be inconsistent with the objectives articulated in the OSTP

memorandum. Evidences can be emailed to the National Agricultural Library. Evidence

presented will be weighed against the benefits of public access. The USDA will work with

http://www.crossref.org/

http://www.crossref.org/fundref/

other Federal agencies that also fund research in that field to coordinate consistent cross-

agency policies.

 Ensure that publications be stored for long-term preservation while remaining publicly

accessible for discovery, retrieval, and analysis.

 Adopt sound, non-proprietary preservation standards and archival formats for publications

and associated content.

 Develop practical backup, migration, and technology refreshing strategies.

 Partner with other appropriate scholarly publication archives across the federal, academic,

and business communities.

 Develop a business plan that details a sustainable funding model for approval by the USDA

Science Council no later than January 2016. An initial PubAg system development effort

was supported by a working capital fund through the National Agricultural Library. The

recurring operating and maintenance costs will be supported by existing research budgets.

Key Milestones:

Phase I (2015)

 Implementation team and structure – Establish a virtual public access implementation

team and proper management structure to develop an implementation plan, execute the

plan, and carry out the implementation effort.

 Publisher negotiation – Negotiate with publishers to establish agreements for automatic

article ingestion, preprocessing, and access. In 2012, USDA’s researchers published papers

in more than 1,700 journals with more than 400 publishers.

 Submission flow and structure – Develop a robust submission flow and establish proper

organizational structures to process, organize, and manage article submissions for review

and publication.

 Quality assurance mechanisms – Establish systematic quality assurance processes and

allocate proper resources to review and curate article submissions to ensure high quality.

 Compliance mechanisms – Establish proper mechanisms (e.g., Digital Object Identifiers,

PubAg ID, FundRef interfaces, and APIs) to facilitate compliance. Current oversight of

grants and other financial assistance allows for withholding or adjustment of funds at the

end of each performance period. Failure to comply will negatively influence future funding

opportunities.

Phase II (2016)

 Cost model – Develop a practical cost model to record and report the operational cost of

implementing public access to scholarly publications. The cost model could be publication-

or annual-based and will be developed and determined by the USDA Science Council.

 Operation funding mechanisms – Develop practical and sustainable funding mechanisms to

ensure the permanent operation, preservation and long-term accessibility of USDA’s

scholarly publications.

 Terms and conditions – Develop proper copy right languages for grant terms and

conditions.

 Publisher agreements – Establish agreements for automatic article ingestion,

preprocessing, and access with major publishers and journal titles.

 Submission flows and mechanisms – Establish flexible flows for manuscript submission.

Accept manuscripts in a range of common electronic formats.

 Compliance reporting – Develop processes to collect and report compliance information.

Phase III (2017 and beyond)

 Collaboration arrangements – Collaborate with partners to maximize the potential for

interoperability between public and private platforms and creative reuse to enhance value

to all stakeholders, and thereby maximize the impact of the Federal research investment.

 Publication and dataset linkage – Define processes and identify resources to facilitate the

linkage between scholarly publications and corresponding scientific datasets.

C. Information Systems and Automation

USDA plans to leverage its existing investments in public access tools and repositories of full-text

scholarly publications (e.g. Agricultural Online Access Database, NAL Digital Collections, Automatic

Indexing System, and NAL Thesaurus) to create the foundation for an expanded repository suitable

for achieving the objectives of the new public access policy. NAL’s Agricultural Online Access

Database currently holds more than 5 million citation records and Digital Collections currently

house more than 90,000 scholarly articles. USDA also plans to collaborate with public and private

partners on the implementation of parts of this expanded and enhanced repository system in

order to avoid unnecessary costs to USDA’s science enterprise. This system will:

 Store, organize, and manage the publications collected or submitted under the public

access policy for scholarly publications.

 Be established using an open architecture and follow industry standards to facilitate open

government, enable integration, and promote interoperability.

 Have the capacity to integrate scholarly publications with appropriate scientific databases.

 Integrate easily into USDA science agencies’ websites.

 Apply best practices, advanced technologies, and industrial standards to provide access for

persons with disabilities consistent with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

 Adopt common standards to enable integration and interoperability with other federal

public access archival solutions and other appropriate archives.

 Implement an agency strategy and establish mechanisms for measuring and enforcing

compliance.

An analysis of alternatives was conducted in early 2013 to compare the costs, benefits, feasibility,

risks, and issues related to various approaches. A modular and hybrid approach was recommended

to develop the desired system solution. A conceptual view of the system called PubAg is illustrated

in Figure 1. This design leverages existing USDA investments and software modules, open source

software tools, private sector products, and reusable modules produced by the National Library of

Medicine, Data.gov and other organizations.

A beta version of the PubAg system (http://pubag.nal.usda.gov) has been developed and became

publicly available October 1, 2014. The current PubAg system supports the submission of articles

from authors, data management, article indexing, search and discovery of articles, and

preservation mechanisms. Further enhancements are planned to enable article ingestion from

publishers, to support text mining and discovery, and to interface with USDA project tracking

systems to monitor and enforce public access policy compliance.

Figure 1 – PubAg: Public Access to Agricultural Scholarly Publication System Architecture

Key Milestones:

Phase I (2015)

 Standards and formats – Adopt industrial metadata standards and full-text formats for

manuscripts and final published articles. Ensure full public access of publications’ metadata

without charge upon first publication in a data format that ensures interoperability with

current and future search technology. Where possible, the metadata will provide a link to

the location where the full text and associated supplemental materials will be made

available no later than the 12 month embargo period.

 Technical approach – Analyze the pros and cons among central, distributed, and hybrid

approaches. Select a practical approach for the implementation.

 Preservation approach – Evaluate and adopt best practices and open technologies for long-

term preservation.

 System architecture – Develop system architecture to serve as a blueprint for system

implementation and deployment.

 Manuscript submission system module – Develop a manuscript submission system to

accept both final peer-reviewed manuscripts and published papers from authors or

publishers.

 Data management module – Develop capabilities to manage metadata generation,

acquisitions, quality control, and auditing.

 Search and discovery module – Develop a web-based user interface for searching,

browsing, and accessing citations and full-text articles.

 Compliance reporting protocols – Define formal protocols for collecting and reporting

compliance information.

 Information exchange Application Program Interface (API) protocols – Define formal

protocols to facilitate machine interface with external systems and to enable the

implementation of compliance tracking.

Phase II (2016)

 Multiple input formats – Accept manuscripts in a range of common electronic formats.

 Publisher interface module – Facilitate access or upload of full-text articles from publishers.

 Preservation and curation standards – Use standards, widely available and, to the extent

possible, nonproprietary archival formats for text and associated contents. Provide for

long-term preservation and access to the content without charge.

 Compliance reporting module – Develop a system module to automate the collection and

report of necessary compliance information based on the defined protocols.

 Information exchange APIs – Develop various APIs to facilitate machine interface with

external systems.

Phase III (2017 and beyond)

 Partner exchange modules – Develop robust modules to harvest and share repository

contents and system services with partners.

 Preservation and curation modules – Develop system modules to facilitate permanent

preservation and long-term accessibility of peer-reviewed scholarly publications.

 Publication and dataset linkage – Develop system modules to facilitate and automate the

linkage between scholarly publications and corresponding scientific datasets.

D. Outreach, Education and Training

Public access to federally-supported research results presents a new challenge for many USDA

science professionals, awardees, and other stakeholders. As such, outreach to these stakeholders

that includes proper education and training are critical to the success of public access

implementation. Major stakeholders include:

 USDA science support professionals – These professionals will undertake the mechanics of

writing requests for applications, ensuring policy compliance, collecting and compiling

project reports that will measure success, and developing systems to track compliance.

Collaborate with FundRef to add funding agency identifiers to manuscript/article metadata.

A combination of FundRef, Digital Object Identifier (DOI), compliance reporting Application

Program Interfaces (APIs), and article metadata will be used for compliance reporting and

enforcement.

 Partners’ administrative professionals – Support professionals at universities and other

science organizations ensure project director and organizational compliance, are heavily

involved in the research reporting process, and oversee business processes that will be

affected by the implementation of the policy.

 Leaders in scientific societies, professional organizations, and other affected stakeholder

groups – Because these individuals advocate for scientific fields and their members,

complete USDA transparency to this group is a must.

 USDA intramural and extramural Scientists – Scientists will need to learn how to submit

scholarly publications and relevant metadata to the PubAg system.

Outreach activities will take several forms:

 Awareness presentations and electronic communications to staff, professional

organizations and scientific societies:

- USDA scientists and support personnel will undertake these activities during the

early implementation phases. Already, 300 people have received training on

manuscript submission; 50 have received training on compliance tracking. These

experiences help inform planning for large-scale outreach.

- Changes to extramural award terms and conditions and other policy and procedural

requirements will be communicated to stakeholders in coordination with other

science agencies.

 Collection of stakeholder input via:

- The Federal inter-agency working groups

- Outreach meetings and presentations

- Other feasible methods

Key Milestones:

Phase I (2015)

 Talking points – Develop a standard set of talking points to describe the policy and

implementation plan of public access to scholarly publications.

 Outreach plan – Develop a comprehensive outreach plan to enable a full and open

consultation with all stakeholders to continuously improve the public access policy and

implementation.

 Training plan – Develop a training plan to analyze target audiences; identify training needs;

outline training methods; describe training materials; outline training modules; define

training roles, responsibilities and requirements; plan training schedule; as well as sketch

evaluation methods.

Phase II (2016)

 Training modules – Develop training curricula that include the course title, course design,

contents, delivery methods, potential instructors, and required associate course materials.

 Online training modules – Develop training modules with proper technology for online

delivery.

 Workshops – Develop workshop plans that include objectives, target audiences, activities,

handouts, facilities, feedbacks and evaluation mechanisms.

Phase III (2017 and beyond)

 AgLearn training module – Develop a training module to be delivered through AgLearn, the

USDA online learning university.

 Expanded training modules – Continue to revise, improve, and expand training modules.

III. Public Access to Digital Scientific Data

This section describes USDA’s approach to increase public access to digitally formatted scientific

data as defined in the OSTP Public Access memorandum (February 22, 2013). In addition to the

overall objectives described in section I, this section of the plan makes provisions to ensure that

implementing access to digitally formatted scientific data:

 Preserves publicly accessible digitally formatted scientific data for search, retrieval, and

analysis;

 Recognizes proprietary interests, business confidential information, and intellectual

property rights, and avoids significant negative impact on intellectual property rights,

innovation, and U.S. competitiveness; and

 Protects confidentiality and personal privacy

A. Policy

The development of a departmental policy on public access to digital scientific data is USDA’s first

step to ensure compliance with federal laws, executive orders, directives, and policies. The policy

enhances innovation and competitiveness by maximizing the potential to create new business

opportunities. It will accelerate scientific breakthroughs and innovation as well as enhance

economic growth and job creation. The policy serves as a roadmap for mission area and/or

individual USDA agency compliance, and sometimes serves as a charge for mission areas and/or

USDA agencies to undertake their own implementation.

A portion of the data that will be affected by this policy falls under the implementation of OMB M-

13-13. Therefore, part of the departmental policy will promote consistency between agencies and

across intramural and extramural research programming. Implementation of M-13-13 is currently

proceeding. This includes the enterprise data inventory required in Section III.3.a of OMB

Memorandum M-13-13 (“Open Data Policy – Managing Information as an Asset”, May 9, 2013).

More information about USDA M-13-13 efforts can be found on USDA’s web site. Extramural

programs are in various states of adoption of open data best practices. The departmental policy,

coupled with the publication of this plan, will ensure that USDA agency open data efforts proceed

in a coordinated fashion.

Upon final acceptance of the USDA Public Access to Data plan by OSTP and OMB, USDA will begin

authorship of such departmental policy for approval by the Secretary. The departmental policy will

take into account the OSTP and OMB review of this draft plan, past and current stakeholder input,

and experience with existing efforts in the Department that provide science value-added access to

scientific data.

This policy will contain, at a minimum, the following elements that address

internal and external research:

 Scope of the policy and definitions from relevant OMB circulars, as they relate to the

Department;

 Responsibilities of parties within the Department for data access implementation, to

include: the Office of the Secretary, Subcabinet officials, the Chief Scientist of the

Department, Chief Information Officer of the Department, intramural and extramural

research agency Heads, and additional officers vested with authority and responsibilities

for implementation;

 Formation of a USDA Science Output Access Policy (SOAP) Council, which will be co-chaired

by the USDA Chief Scientist (or SES designee) and the USDA Chief Information Officer (or

SES designee), with representation from key intramural and extramural science Agencies in

the Department;

 A process for periodic review and revision of the science output access plan, as well as the

policy itself.

In the interim, the Chief Scientist of the Department, working with other Agencies and Mission

Areas through the USDA Science Council, will lead USDA Public Access to Scientific Data policy

development until the SOAP Council is in place.

Tasks of the USDA Science Output Access Policy (SOAP) Council

After approval of this implementation plan, either the SOAP Council or its Science Council

predecessor will conduct the following activities to the extent feasible and consistent with law;

agency mission; resource constraints; U.S. national, homeland, and economic security:

 Establish policies and strategies that will result in compliance with the OSTP Public Access

memorandum in the following areas:

o Meeting Public Access goals and objectives;

o Business Processes, Procedures, and Resources;

o Information Systems and Automation; and

o Outreach, Education, and Training

o Development of an agency strategy for measuring and enforcing compliance for

both intramural and extramural research activities

The SOAP Council will establish an overall USDA leader in each of the five areas, foster

synchronization among these areas and across the department, and ensure close

Existing science value-added efforts within the Department to promote public access to digital scientific data include

USFS Research Data Archive, NIFA/NSF iPlant initiative, ARS National Plant Germplasm System, and NRCS Geospatial

Data Gateway.

coordination with other science agencies and partnering organizations. Milestones and

their target dates, as described in this document, may be altered because of these efforts.

 Seek robust, ongoing, and high-level feedback from internal and external stakeholders,

including:

o Federally funded researchers,

o Universities,

o Libraries,

o Publishers,

o Users of Federally funded research results, and

o Civil society groups

 Compile an inventory of intramural and extramural research activities that will be affected

by the OSTP Public Access memorandum. This inventory will serve as a baseline, and will

categorize the current state of intramural and extramural research activities as:

o Category 1: In full compliance with the directive;

o Category 2: In partial compliance with the directive and share some data in some

fashion, with an explanation of the shortfall;

o Category 3: Do not currently share data; and

o Category 4: Likely to be excluded from the scope of the directive, including the

reasoning for that exclusion

This inventory will serve as the basis for measurement of departmental compliance with

the OSTP directive. Intramural and extramural work on this inventory is already

proceeding. However, final categorizations will be informed by the aforementioned

departmental policy, as guided by stakeholder input. The inventory will identify existing

activities that might serve as model programs. Inventory information on research activities

in Categories 2 and 3 will be used to prioritize implementation efforts, recognizing that

some research activities will face significant adoption challenges given near term systems

and resources. For Category 4, agencies will identify barriers for activities that face

significant adoption challenges and propose possible solutions where appropriate.

Additionally, this inventory will provide a broad overview of the significant intellectual

property, attribution, security, and other crosscutting challenges that are likely to be

encountered during implementation of the plan.

 Periodically review data set citation recommendations. While current departmental

approaches for identifying and providing appropriate attribution to scientific data sets

represent modern best practices, this element of the plan recognizes that the science

community’s approach to data set attribution may evolve over time.

 Cooperate in the authorship of the IT and Business Plan study described later in this

document.

 Author and submit to the Science Council an option memo that provides Agencies with

guidance on the strengths and weaknesses of the following strategic IT policy options:

o Development of a USDA data repository for all federally supported research data;

o Contribution to a single federal wide data repository;

o Encouragement of a highly interoperable federal, academic, private hybrid system

This memo will be informed by the aforementioned inventory as well as the in-depth study

discussed in the information technology section of this document. It will assess and take

into account the long-term needs for the preservation of scientific data in the food,

agricultural, and natural resources fields, probable implementation costs, and additional

Agency and Mission Area policy requirements needed to measure and enforce compliance

with each respective option. Further, these options should include alternative funding

requirements and business models that will contribute to a final business plan.

The SOAP Council will develop and present action and policy recommendations, complete

with a recommended business plan that details a sustainable funding model, for approval

by the USDA Science Council no later one year after approval of this implementation plan

based on these options. This sustainable funding model will identify resources within the

existing agency budget to implement the plan.

Key milestones (2015 – 2016):

 OSTP and OMB approve USDA’s implementation plan for access to digital scientific data

 USDA convenes SOAP Council and begins drafting departmental policy

 Complete inventory of affected programs and their categorization

 USDA publishes departmental policy

 Provide option memo with guidance for Agencies and Mission Areas

B. Business Processes, Procedures and Resources

While some programs and Agencies have significant experience with providing public access to

scientific data, the OSTP Public Access memorandum will dramatically change the way that all

USDA Agencies, partner organizations, and individual researchers do their work. A phased

implementation is necessary to secure the benefits of increasing access to federally funded

research without causing undue disruption to the research system that the public relies on for new

discoveries. Implementing long-term preservation of and public access to digital scientific data will

require substantially more training and acculturation than improving public access to scholarly

publications, as relatively few USDA scientists or research agreement awardees have practical

experience with this activity. The scientific community’s delivery infrastructure for digital scientific

data is also much less mature than the analogous infrastructure for scholarly publications. Portions

of USDA-funded scientific data sets reside on scientists’ computers, and data set documentation

resides primarily in the heads of the scientists working on the individual research projects.

Phase 1 (Learning and Expansion: 2015 - 2016)

As previously discussed, several programs are already substantially in compliance with the Public

Access memorandum, and others can serve as pilots for expansion. Affected agencies will form

implementation teams to facilitate learning from existing programs and to oversee the success of

pilots for expanding implementation of the policy. These agency teams should coordinate business

process, procedures and resources with their counterparts across the department and report

regularly to the SOAP Council. The SOAP Council will be responsible for coordinating activities of

implementation teams with efforts by science agencies outside the Department to implement the

Public Access to Scientific Data policy. However, agency teams might need to work directly with

agencies in other departments to coordinate activities. Agency implementation teams and the

SOAP Council will solicit and evaluate stakeholder input. Based on this input, the following are

likely steps that will foster compliance with the new departmental policy:

 Performance standard and element modification;

 Agency and/or Mission Area intramural research project management guidelines;

 Award terms and conditions;

 Request for application templates;

 Grants.gov and agency grant preparation instructions (general instructions, FAQs,

application checklist, lengthening minimum page standards to accommodate data

management plans, etc.);

 Guidance for the inclusion of appropriate costs for data management and access in

extramural funding proposals;

 Project data management plan evaluation rubrics to ensure proper assessment of plan

merits;

 Encouraging scientific journals to require data availability as a condition of publishing

research articles; and

 Other steps as necessary

For internal researchers, the key steps will include building open data-related compliance into

performance standards and elements, ideally including the Research Grade Evaluation process.

Data management plans for extramural research will be evaluated as a part of grant applications

and periodically verified as part of reporting. Non-compliance will jeopardize current and/or future

agency funding. The approach created by USDA Forest Service and the Joint Fire Science Program

(JFSP) to track compliance with data preservation and access components of JFSP awardees’ data

management plans can inform the development of compliance mechanisms for USDA research

grants and contracts.

USDA science and science support employees who participate in pilots and teams will be seen as

forward-looking leaders. Activities may include the following recommended best practices:

 Publishing intramural data thorough existing public sites and data repositories;

 Presenting in-service best practice workshops for USDA colleagues;

 Authorship of research project data access plans;

 Leadership of extramural programs calling for data management plans;

 Creation of discipline-based data standards and/or repositories;

 Conducting outreach activities for external scientists;

 Developing IT or business process infrastructure to manage increased public data access;

 Service on an agency public data access implementation team; and

 Participating in Public Access to Data policy development

In 2015, the USDA-level working group will solicit information about pilot participation from

affected agencies as one measurement of compliance. This information will be reported to the

SOAP Council no later than 60 days after the solicitation is distributed to affected USDA agencies.

Phase 2 (Mainstream Implementation: 2016 - 2017)

The Learning and Expansion phase will inform the Mainstream Implementation phase, in which

policy implementation is extended throughout the Department’s science enterprise. Performance

guidance will include increased public data access as a standard for USDA scientists and support

staff. Changes to extramural award terms and conditions and other policy and procedural

requirements will be communicated to stakeholders in coordination with other science agencies.

USDA will also notify awardees and other federally funded scientific researchers of their

obligations via requests for applications, federal register notices, and changes in award terms and

conditions, as necessary. Extramural research program requests for applications will begin to

require data management plans as a part of new proposals; similarly, new intramural research

studies will require data management plans. These data management plans will, at a minimum,

describe how the researcher(s) will provide for long-term preservation of, and access to, the digital

scientific data created by the proposed study. Alternatively, researchers can explain in their data

management plans why long term preservation and access cannot be justified, if applicable. USDA

will reserve the right to review and disallow the researcher’s argument against long-term

preservation and access and require conformance to the access policy for digital scientific data as

a condition of funding. New extramural research programs and intramural research projects will

begin as Category 1 (in full compliance) beginning in 2016.

All USDA-funded researchers will be required to comply with USDA’s policy for making the digital

data underlying the conclusions of peer-reviewed scientific research publications freely available

in public repositories in machine readable formats. USDA will ensure that data management plans

include clear plans for sharing research data. USDA will also ensure new awards to researchers are

not made unless the researcher has successfully satisfied all terms of completed previous awards

from USDA, including making digital data produced in the course of previous USDA-funded

research freely available in compliance with the relevant data management plans for the previous

awards.

In 2016, Agencies and Mission Areas will report to the SOAP Council on intramural and extramural

Category 2 & 3 science programs that are not prepared to expand public access to research data.

Reports will describe barriers to expansion and plans to improve adoption.

Phase 3 (Sustainable Adoption: 2018 and beyond)

Agencies will be expected to make substantial progress to improve data sharing, while preserving

the balance between the: 1) relative value of long-term preservation and access; and 2) associated

cost and administrative burden. Post award compliance mechanisms will be perfected and added

to award terms and conditions. Progress will be reported to the Directors of OSTP and OMB

regularly through the SOAP Council or its designated successor organization. It is important to note

that some research, due to feasibility; privacy; consistency with law; business confidential

information and other proprietary interests; agency mission; resource constraints; and/or U.S.

national, homeland, and economic security will not afford public access to data. This could be the

case for entire research programs, including the Small Business Innovation Research program and

some research capacity funding programs.

Key Milestones:

Phase 1 – Learning and Expansion (2015 – 2016)

 Pilot programs identified

 Agency implementation teams formed

 Draft updates to performance standards and elements completed

 SOAP Council solicits progress reports

 Agencies submit progress report to SOAP Council

Phase 2 – Mainstream Implementation (2017)

 Final publication of new award terms and conditions, which have cleared the required

federal register process, as well as concomitant grant and agreement documents and other

resources (post award compliance mechanism work ongoing)

 Fiscal year performance plans incorporate new performance standards

 Agencies report non-early adopting projects and programs

 Projects and programs broadly adopt public access protocols; on-going redirection of

internal resources to support phased adoption; intramural and extramural research may

follow different tracks

 Experience provides feedback on the public access protocols – semi-annually throughout

the phased adoption process

 SOAP Council solicits progress reports

 Agencies submit progress report to SOAP Council

Phase 3 – Sustainable Adoption (2018 and beyond)

 Adoption across USDA’s science enterprise is completed and supported by sustainable

systems – 6 years after initial plan approval and decades into the future

 SOAP Council solicits progress reports – annually throughout phased adoption; possibly

biannually for up to four years after adoption is completed

 Agencies submit progress report to SOAP Council – not more than 30 days after solicitation

 Cultural shift in USDA science community successfully implemented – 2025 and beyond

C. Information Systems and Automation

The graphic below shows a desirability continuum of research data sharing information systems.

 An IT and Business Plan study will be submitted by the SOAP Council during Phase 1 that

discusses findings and recommendations in the following areas, at a minimum:

o An inventory of appropriate, available, and/or developing federal and non-federal

data repositories, which are currently or are poised to receive research data

consistent with the requirements of new federal open data access policies;

Single perfect

federal RDS

systems

Interoperable

set of complete

department

based RDS

systems

Complete &

interoperable

coverage with a

federal-

academic-

private hybrid

RDS systems

Complete non-

interoperable

coverage with a

highly

distributed RDS

systems

Incomplete

coverage with

highly

distributed RDS

systems, some

interoperability

Highly

distributed RDS

systems

congealing

around academic

diciplines

Spotty RDS

systems with

little or no

coordination

Few or no

research data

sharing (RDS)

requirements,

few or no RDS

systems

Less Desirable

More Desirable

o Potential public-private partnerships with foundations and other research funding

organizations, including the new Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research as

proposed in the President’s 2015 Budget;

o Data standards common to single and multiple disciplines in the food, agriculture,

and natural resources sectors;

o Recommended near-term modifications to the CRIS system and REEport to allow

accommodation of data management plan information, more robust metadata, and

new compliance tracking;

o Potential for REEIS and other existing systems to serve as public metadata portals;

o Identify ways to optimize search, archival, and dissemination features, and ensure

long-term stewardship of the results of federally funded research. For example, the

Forest Service Research Data Archive (FS RDA) participates in CrossRef, science.gov,

and Thomson-Reuters Data Citation Index to improve search. In addition, FS RDA

data sets are considered permanent Federal records, ensuring long-term

stewardship by the agency and NARA; and

o Strategies being pursued by the largest science agencies (NIH, NSF, others) to

increase public data availability

This study should be informed by previously identified Category 1 and pilot programs that

are leading departmental efforts. As part of Phase 1, the SOAP Council will use this study to

develop near-term action recommendations for approval by the USDA Science Council.

 Encourage development of discipline-based data management standards and data

repositories by scientists who are undertaking pilot program activities. As soon as possible

after the aforementioned data repository inventory is made available, key portions should

be made available to all USDA scientists.

 Prototype first round of changes to the CRIS system and REEport to accommodate data

management fields by the end of Phase 1.

 Develop a catalog of data sets generated via USDA-sponsored research to enable

researchers to locate and cite data sets and to link those data sets to the scientific

literature. This catalog is expected to be part of the comprehensive public listing of agency

data that is required by the 2013 May 9 Executive Order and OMB Memorandum M-13-13.

The USDA data catalog will serve not as a repository of study data, but as a registry that will

have information describing the data set (i.e. metadata) and information about where and

how to access the data. The metadata in the catalog will be able to provide both scientific

metadata and the Federal government’s common core metadata scheme (available at

https://project-open-data.cio.gov).

 USDA will explore the development of a research data commons, a federated system of

research databases, along with other Departments and Agencies for storage,

discoverability, and reuse of data with a particular focus on making the data underlying the

conclusions of peer-reviewed scientific publications resulting from federally funded

scientific research available for free.

Key Milestones (2015 – 2016):

 SOAP Council receives working group study that includes an inventory of existing data

repositories, potential public-private partnerships, prospective changes to reporting

systems, and other near-term action recommendations

 USDA Science Council decides near-term action recommendations

 Strategic options memo presented to the SOAP council

 Pilot data standards and repository development undertaken by USDA are summarized

 USDA Science Council decides strategic data management directions and long term action

recommendations

 Initial changes to REEport are prototyped to accommodate data management reporting, in

coordination with other science agencies that use Research Performance Progress

Reporting standards

D. Outreach, Education and Training

Public access to federally supported research data is a new concept for many USDA science

professionals, awardees, and other stakeholders. USDA needs to provide training, education, and

workforce development related to data management, analysis, storage, preservation, and

stewardship, in coordination with other agencies and the private sector. This will include:

 USDA Intramural and Extramural Scientists – Scientists will need to learn how to develop

high quality data management plans, the most effective avenues to make data public, and

best practices to facilitate re-use of the data.

 USDA Intramural and Extramural National Program Leaders – National Program Leaders will

need to become informed about the current state of public data access in their fields in

order to provide the best possible science leadership.

 USDA Extramural Program Panelists and Panel Managers – Panelists and panel managers

will need to learn how to evaluate data management plans. USDA will examine current

best practices in this area and develop guidance for program panelists and panel managers

during the pilot year. USDA Forest Service’s experience with Joint Fire Science Program’s

implementation of data management plans in 2011 is expected to provide insight.

 USDA Science Support Professionals – These professionals will undertake the mechanics of

writing requests for applications, ensuring policy compliance, collecting and compiling

project reports that will measure success, and developing systems to track compliance.

Researchers must report on execution of their data management plan in their final reports

to the agency. For intramural program staffs, the key step to ensuring this will include

building data access-related compliance into performance reviews. Data management

plans for extramural research will be evaluated as a part of grant applications and

periodically verified as part of reporting; extramural program staffs will play a key role in

this process. Non-compliance will jeopardize current and/or future agency funding, a

process that will be implemented by extramural program staffs.

 Partnering Administrative Professionals – Support professionals at universities and other

science organizations ensure project director and organizational compliance, are heavily

involved in the research reporting process, and oversee business processes that will be

affected by the implementation of the policy.

 Leaders in scientific societies, professional organizations, and other affected stakeholder

groups – Since these individuals advocate for their scientific fields and membership,

complete USDA transparency to this group is critical.

Outreach activities will take several forms:

 Awareness presentations and electronic communications to existing professional

organizations, scientific societies;

o USDA scientists and support personnel will undertake these activities during the

pilot and early implementation phases

 Collection of stakeholder input via:

o Applicable Federal Advisory Committees

o Presentations and outreach activities

o Non-formal methods

 Formal training and job aid development and delivery, including job aids to facilitate

panelist evaluation of data management plans.

The SOAP Council Outreach, Education, and Training group will coordinate these activities.

In 2015, this working group will publish a set of official USDA-wide talking points for use by USDA

scientists and other leaders to use at existing venues where stakeholders gather. These talking

points will be approved by the USDA Office of Communications and the USDA Science council by

this date. Based on these talking points, this group will conduct an internal USDA webinar to

create awareness among USDA scientists and support personnel.

The working group will coordinate with Federal Advisory Committees to assess the knowledge

needs of the stakeholders outlined above. It will poll the affected agencies to determine the sorts

of stakeholder questions that are being received and the types of training being requested. In

2015, the working group will compile an inventory of all existing, planned, and unplanned but

required training based on individual agency needs. The working group will coordinate the

development of this training within USDA to reduce duplication, as well as facilitating adaptation

of existing training published by other agencies, universities, and other organizations. The majority

of these resources required for the implementation phase will be complete by 2016. With

guidance by the working group, agencies will develop and share these resources utilizing the most

appropriate medium for the audience and message.

Key Milestones (2015 – 2016):

 Official USDA-wide talking points developed and approved

 Conduct webinars for USDA science and support personnel; make available for viewing

 Meet with applicable Federal Advisory Committees and poll agencies to assess training

needs

 List of existing, planned, and unplanned but required training created

 Complete coordinated agency efforts to make future training available

Key Milestones (2016 and beyond):

 Institutionalize the provision of regular and ongoing training and outreach information

regarding increasing access to publically funded research data for internal and external

scientists and stakeholders.

 Refine training and outreach materials as needed.