Department Of Energy To Launch Public Access Portal

The Department of Energy’s Office of Science announced on Aug. 4 how it will provide free public access to the results of DOE-funded research within 12 months of its publication.

The Public Access Gateway for Energy & Science (www.osti.gov/pages) will provide links to published articles or journal-accepted, peer-reviewed manuscripts. The DOE website is the first agency response to a 2013 White House memo requiring all federal agencies funding more than $100 million of research per year to make the results of that work freely available.

John C. Vaughn, executive vice president of the Association of American Universities, says DOE is allowing papers to stay behind a paywall for 12 months, which is a shorter period than many publishers had wanted, before they are made freely available to the public. He expects other federal agencies to strike similar middle ground.

DOE is working with a consortium of more than 100 publishers that operates CHORUS (Clearinghouse for the Open Research of the U.S.), which helps link articles on publishers’ websites to open access databases.

Public access to articles on a publisher’s website ensures that readers are looking at the most up-to-date presentation that would reflect any corrections or retractions, says Susan King, chair of the consortium. King is senior vice president of the Journals Publishing Group at the American Chemical Society, which publishes C&EN.