Memorandum on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research

The Memorandum on Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research  was released on February 22, 2013 by Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, to improve access to scientific publications and the data behind them in order to “accelerate scientific breakthroughs and innovation, promote entrepreneurship, and enhance economic growth and job creation.” The memorandum directed federal agencies that spend more than $100 million annually on R&D to develop plans to make the results of federally funded research freely available to the public, generally within one year of publication. The memorandum also stated that the metadata from federally funded research should be made available.

The sections within the memorandum include:

• An agency public access plan that outlines what each agency must include in their own agency wide plan

• Objectives for public access to scientific publication

• Objectives for public access to scientific data in digital forms

• Implementation for public access plans

Three years later, in February 2016, the White House issued an update, which outlined the ways in which the original memorandum had been expanded and implemented. An October 2016 White House update further described how the increased availability of research results are ushering in “an era of open science.”