[LIS-Forum] OA at USDA

[Subbiah Arunachalam]

OA Policy at USDA

Meanwhile, Over At The Department Of Agriculture
Posted on March 20, 2015
<https://pascophronesis.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/meanwhile-over-at-the-department-of-agriculture/>
by David Bruggeman <https://pascophronesis.wordpress.com/author/dbruggeman/>

I missed the announcement when the Agriculture Department (USDA) released
its open access policy
<http://www.usda.gov/documents/USDA-Public-Access-Implementation-Plan.pdf>
for research results and digital data.  I chalk it up to the tunnel vision
of many science policy analysts – The Agriculture Department is often an
afterthought.  But starting January 1, 2016, USDA grantees cannot make
public access an afterthought.

The Department’s policy takes advantage of existing information
infrastructure for its public access repository system.  Research articles
funded by the Department will have to be submitted to this repository
within 12 months of publication.  USDA has developed a research search
engine, PubAg <http://pubag.nal.usda.gov/pubag/home.xhtml>, that already
contains research articles published by USDA scientists.

The Department is still working through how it will address digital
scientific data.  This portion of the current plan describes how the agency
will manage and organize the development of this policy, with specific
requirements to come later.  Three repository options are currently under
consideration (page 16) – a USDA data repository for all federally
supported research data; contribution to a single federal wide data
repository; and encouragement of a highly interoperable federal, academic,
private hybrid system.  Most agencies’ plans that I have read are, if the
address accessing research data sets, approach a hybrid approach, linking
to research data sets, but not necessarily storing them within the agency.
It’s too early to tell what choice will be made, but the USDA might have
sufficient research history and resources to develop its own data
repository.  We should find out sometime in 2016.

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