Public Access is an initiative in response to memoranda issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which aim to ensure that research outputs from federally funded research are made available to the public.
NSF
Effective July 1, 2024, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) enabled six new product types in the NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR): audiovisual, data paper, educational aid and curriculum, posted content, software, and sound. The NSF-PAR search and filter feature has been updated to include all 11 supported product types. There are no changes to NSF’s Public Access policy or project reporting requirements.
Principal Investigators (PIs) and co-PIs may also need to enter a digital object identifier (DOI) depending on the product type being added to the NSF-PAR:
• Audiovisual, software, and sound products must be entered with a DOI.
• Data paper and posted content products can be entered with or without a DOI.
• Educational aid or curriculum products can only be added without a DOI.
Adding New Products to NSF Project Reports
The six new product types do not currently auto-populate from the NSF-PAR into NSF project reports in Research.gov, but PIs and co-PIs can manually add these product types to project reports. See the table below for navigation instructions in the Research.gov Project Reporting System to add the new product types.
| NSF-PAR Product Type | How to Add Product Type Manually to NSF Project Reports |
| Audiovisual | Select “Other Products” > “Audio or Video Products” |
| Data Paper | Select “Other Conference Presentation/Paper” |
| Educational Aid or Curriculum | Select “Other Products” > “Educational Aids or Curricula” |
| Posted Content | Select “Other Product” > “Other” |
| Software | Select “Other Product” > “Software or Netware” |
| Sound | Select “Other Products” > “Audio or Video Products” |
Research.gov About Public Access Page
Visit the Research.gov About Public Access page for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and updated how-to guides that include the six new product types. Also see the NSF Public Access Initiative page for the latest information on open science.
NIH
Public Access Policy is the requirement that investigators submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central.
Visit Becker Library’s website for public access policies in the following areas:
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- Other federal agencies (non-NIH)
- Foundations, charities and organizations
Contact Engineering Subject Librarian Lauren Todd (314-935-7394) for assistance with public access policies.