Energy Dept. Unveils Plan to Increase Public Access to Research It Finances

The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday unveiled a plan to increase public access to research that it finances, in response to an order last year from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Science magazine reported.

The Obama administration last year directed federal agencies to develop plans to make the results of research they support publicly available within a year of publication. The Energy Department will do so through a web-based portal known as the Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science, or Pages. The Energy Department is the first agency to release its public-access plan.

Heather Joseph, executive director of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, said in a written statement that the department’s plan “takes steps towards achieving the goals of the directive, but falls short in some key areas.”

She asserted that the department’s plan did not sufficiently address the question of reuse rights, and urged researchers financed by the department to “choose the shortest-possible embargo period for their work.”