[Federal Register Volume 76, Number 214 (Friday, November 4, 2011)]
[Notices]
[Pages 68517-68518]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2011-28621]
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OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY
Request for Information: Public Access to Digital Data Resulting
From Federally Funded Scientific Research
ACTION: Notice of Request for Information (RFI).
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SUMMARY: In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request for
Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals and
organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring
long-term stewardship and encouraging broad public access to
unclassified digital data that result from federally funded scientific
research. The public input provided through this Notice will inform
deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's
Interagency Working Group on Digital Data.
Release Date: November 3, 2011.
Response Date: January 12, 2012.
ADDRESSES: [email protected].
Issued By: Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) on behalf
of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC).
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Purpose
In accordance with Section 103(b)(6) of the America COMPETES
Reauthorization Act of 2010 (ACRA; Pub. L. 111-358), this Request for
Information (RFI) offers the opportunity for interested individuals and
organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring
long-term stewardship and encouraging broad public access to
unclassified digital data that result from federally funded scientific
research. The public input provided through this Notice will inform
deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's
Interagency Working Group on Digital Data.
Background
The multi-agency Interagency Working Group on Digital Data (Working
Group), established under the National Science and Technology Council
(NSTC) Committee on Science (CoS), has been tasked with developing
options for implementing the digital data policy and standards
requirements of Section 103 of ACRA. OSTP will issue a report to
Congress, in accordance with Section 103(e) of ACRA, describing
priorities for the development of agency policies for ensuring broad
public access to the results of federally funded unclassified research,
the status of agency policies for public access to digital data
resulting from federally funded research, and a summary of public input
collected from this RFI and other mechanisms. The Working Group is
considering steps that can be taken by Federal agencies to encourage
and coordinate the development of agency policies and standards to
promote long-term preservation of and access to digital data resulting
from federally funded scientific research. Ideally, such policies would
harmonize, to the extent practicable and feasible, data management
plans for digital data that are collected or otherwise produced either
by the agency itself or extramurally with Federal funds. The 2009
report of the Interagency Working Group on Digital Data of the National
Science and Technology Council, ``Harnessing the Power of Digital
Data,'' recommended that agencies lay the foundations for digital
scientific data policy and make their policies publicly available. It
also recommended that agencies consider requiring data management plans
for projects that will generate ``preservation data''--those data for
which the benefits of preservation exceed the costs. Federal science
agencies already have some experience with policies to promote long-
term preservation and access to scientific data. Indeed current Federal
policies promote and in many cases require Federal agencies to make the
digital data generated by Federal agencies more publically accessible.
However, such policies do not routinely cover data generated through
Federal grants, cooperative agreements, and some other types of funding
mechanism. Exceptions include, the National Institutes of Health's
(NIH) Data Sharing Policy, which requires all investigator-initiated
applications with direct costs greater than $500,000 in any single year
provide a data management plan. In addition, NIH has more specific data
management and data sharing requirements for specific types of
projects, such as genome-wide association studies.
In January 2011, the National Science Foundation (NSF) reaffirmed
its data management policy requirement, indicating that proposals must
include a Data Management Plan that describes how funded researchers
will conform to NSF policy on the dissemination and sharing of research
results. The NSF policy is clear that ``Investigators are expected to
share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and
within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical
collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the
course of work under NSF grants.'' Such models may not necessarily be
appropriate for all types of federally sponsored research.
As agencies consider how to further develop digital data policies,
it is important to note that all policies for increasing accountability
and access to digital data must follow statutory
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requirements and follow best practices for protecting confidentiality,
personal privacy, proprietary interests, intellectual property rights,
author attribution, and for ensuring that homeland and national
security interests are not compromised.
The Working Group is now seeking additional insight from ``non-
Federal stakeholders, including the public, universities, nonprofit and
for-profit publishers, libraries, federally funded and non-federally
funded research scientists, and other organizations and institutions
with an interest in long-term stewardship and improved public access to
the results of federally funded research,'' as described in Section
103(b)(6) of ACRA. Specifically the Working Group seeks further public
comment on the questions listed below:
Preservation, Discoverability, and Access
(1) What specific Federal policies would encourage public access to
and the preservation of broadly valuable digital data resulting from
federally funded scientific research, to grow the U.S. economy and
improve the productivity of the American scientific enterprise?
(2) What specific steps can be taken to protect the intellectual
property interests of publishers, scientists, Federal agencies, and
other stakeholders, with respect to any existing or proposed policies
for encouraging public access to and preservation of digital data
resulting from federally funded scientific research?
(3) How could Federal agencies take into account inherent
differences between scientific disciplines and different types of
digital data when developing policies on the management of data?
(4) How could agency policies consider differences in the relative
costs and benefits of long-term stewardship and dissemination of
different types of data resulting from federally funded research?
(5) How can stakeholders (e.g., research communities, universities,
research institutions, libraries, scientific publishers) best
contribute to the implementation of data management plans?
(6) How could funding mechanisms be improved to better address the
real costs of preserving and making digital data accessible?
(7) What approaches could agencies take to measure, verify, and
improve compliance with Federal data stewardship and access policies
for scientific research? How can the burden of compliance and
verification be minimized?
(8) What additional steps could agencies take to stimulate
innovative use of publicly accessible research data in new and existing
markets and industries to create jobs and grow the economy?
(9) What mechanisms could be developed to assure that those who
produced the data are given appropriate attribution and credit when
secondary results are reported?
Standards for Interoperability, Re-Use and Re-Purposing
(10) What digital data standards would enable interoperability,
reuse, and repurposing of digital scientific data? For example, MIAME
(minimum information about a microarray experiment; see Brazma et al.,
2001, Nature Genetics 29, 371) is an example of a community-driven data
standards effort.
(11) What are other examples of standards development processes
that were successful in producing effective standards and what
characteristics of the process made these efforts successful?
(12) How could Federal agencies promote effective coordination on
digital data standards with other nations and international
communities?
(13) What policies, practices, and standards are needed to support
linking between publications and associated data?
Response to this RFI is voluntary. Responders are free to address
any or all the above items, as well as provide additional information
that they think is relevant to developing policies consistent with
increased preservation and dissemination of broadly useful digital data
resulting from federally funded research. Please note that the
Government will not pay for response preparation or for the use of any
information contained in the response.
How To Submit a Response
All comments must be submitted electronically to:
[email protected].
Responses to this RFI will be accepted through January 12, 2012.
You will receive an electronic confirmation acknowledging receipt of
your response, but will not receive individualized feedback on any
suggestions. No basis for claims against the U.S. Government shall
arise as a result of a response to this request for information or from
the Government's use of such information.
Inquiries
Specific questions about this RFI should be directed to the
following email address: [email protected].
Form should include:
[Assigned ID ]
[Assigned Entry date]
Name/Email
Affiliation/Organization
City, State
Comment 1
Comment 2
Comment 3
Comment 4,
Comment 5
Comment 6
Comment 7
Comment 8
Comment 9
Comment 10
Comment 11
In addition, please identify any other items the Working Group
might consider for Federal policies related to public access to peer-
reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally supported
research.
Please attach any documents that support your comments to the
questions.
Ted Wackler,
Deputy Chief of Staff.
[FR Doc. 2011-28621 Filed 11-3-11; 8:45 am]
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