Providing Open Access To Published NASA Research Results (Update)
Fully Opening NASA Research Data To The Public, SpaceRef
“In 2013 The White House told NASA and other government agencies that they needed to make the results of their research more readily available to the public. In so doing the White House said that agencies needed to make research publications that had been available only for a fee available for free within 12 months of their publication. The public plaid for this science, the public should have access to it. … NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen was able to provide me with insight into this project. Their intent is ambitious, but if they pull off, NASA will have a substantially enhanced presence online in a way that a much broader audience will be able to access and utilize research results from NASA. Based on my discussion with Allen there is the intent to fully comply with the spirit and intent of what the White House has directed NASA to do.”
Keith’s update: This presentation was delivered last week at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center regarding NASA’s plans to collect and post research data. Download.
Pretty soon, I’m guessing. See this announcement of a briefing for NASA Goddard scientists next week:
NASA Deputy Chief Scientist Gale Allen, accompanied by SMD Lead for Research Max Bernstein, will visit Goddard to brief us on two topics of great interest to proposers and researchers: NASA’s new policy on data management and publication archiving. The policy responds to direction from the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President and pertains to all federally funded research. In short, our proposals are required to include Data Management Plans, and our research papers must be accessible to the public. Come and learn how you can satisfy the new requirements. Please mark your calendar and join me for this important briefing on Thursday, November 12, 2 – 3 pm
Thanks! I sent an email to the NASA CIO, NASA Chief Scientist, SMD, and NASA PAO asking “Can you provide me with a copy of the NASA plan and requirements whereby NASA research publications are made available to the public per OSTP guidance – the topic you will be discussing at NASA GSFC on 12 November such that I can share it with my readers? I certainly hope that you will not tell me to file a FOIA request since that would fly in the face of the intent of OSTP’s original guidance.”
All authors supported by US tax dollars have the ability to make their publications freely accessible in either of two ways. First, publish in a freely accessible journal like PLOS One. That’s what I do. If you cannot do this, request a PDF of your paper and place it online in your own web archive or in one of the publicly accessible research archive like the one maintained by the National Library of Medicine.
If it’s not freely accessible in full text, it’s not published research.
The powerpoint presentation seem quite complex and it has been several years since the federal directive was issued. The directive to use the NIH archive is reasonable but it’s surprising NASA does not have its own, setting up a publicly accessible internet archive is pretty simple.
I myself make sure to put all my papers out there on a publicly accessible website (since the 90’s). Once I learned the government held copyright, this was just basic.
Other people just submit a copy to NTRS.
The PLOS One idea is a good one.
The “publish on my own website” route is commonly followed by many space scientists, especially those in academic departments. Check out their academic homepages and look for a publications list. Many of these have links to local PDF copies of the papers.
The researchers don’t call a lot of attention to this, perhaps to avoid getting static from the organizations publishing the journals.
I want to know how they are going to avoid getting tangled up in ITAR red tape for every paper.
It’s easy-in theory. Once approved via the NASA Document Availability Authorization (DAA) process, which is now electronic, most papers of which are cleared as public, no limitations, all you’d have to do is have someone transfer copies of those paper’s over to a searchable website.
The papers and charts have to be attached to the DAA electronically nowadays. Any work of the government carries no copyright – so just searching all “public” DAA’s, of which a nice amount should already be in the internal DAA system, and placing these in a public searchable database would do the trick. The title, keywords and other metadata would be in the DAA system too (like topic area, etc.)
Now the reality. I’ve seen this problem since the 90’s. Someone will ALWAYS come along and say wait a minute, I need to make sure these are actually all public…or some such idiotic drivel…or I need to make sure that I format them right…or that they get an “EXTRA” review…and the whole thing collapses.
It gets worse. I once called a co-worker at another center for a copy of a paper of theirs and they refused to send me a copy citing the conferences copyright. Even after explaining that as a work of the government the copyright was the governments they said they had to check. They said I could buy it on the conference site.
I never got that paper. Ahh…ignorance is bliss, and so unproductive.
Freely accessible publications are considered ITAR-free. The problem is getting it published in the first place, since anything in the open literature will of course be accessible to .people from other countries. I am not aware of how anything that is actually ITAR-restricted could be published in the normal literature. ITAR is an ill wind that blows nobody any good. It was a bad idea when it was enacted, and it is still a bad idea.
Here’s a new twist on ITAR too. I’m seeing for a time now more use of the little print “this document has NOT been reviewed for ITAR blah blah” – so pass this around at your own risk of maybe being ITAR!
Well isn’t that nice!
The team essentially gets to restrict the document as ITAR without actually having to declare it ITAR and do squat for paperwork (or electronic submittal nowadays) to declare it anything!
Fear will be the end of us.
But NASA “secrets” won’t fall into the hands of Chinese “spies”.
In our ISO 9K (yeah, really) publication approval process, various levels of NASA management approval are required to concur in validating the checkbox option for the author that the contents deal only with planets ‘n’ stars ‘n’ stuff.