The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Association of American Universities (AAU) are working with research universities to improve public access to federally funded research data. Drawing on insights from leading institutions, APLU and AAU have issued several reports outlining steps the federal government and public universities can take to increase public access to research data. 

Public access to data used in federally funded research in peer-reviewed journals is essential for rigorous science, discovery, and the reproducibility of research. Public universities are committed to sharing the results of their research whenever possible.   

In 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a memo directing federal agencies with more than $100 million in annual research spending to make the results of federally funded research available. Not all results from federal research is subject to this disclosure. APLU and AAU formed a working group on public access examining how to improve public access to data resulting from federally funded research. In 2017, the group issued a report with recommendations to universities on how to increase public access to research data on their own campuses and how they also work together to advance these efforts.

Subsequently, in 2018, APLU and AAU led a National Science Foundation-funded workshop (NSF #1837847) helping 30 institutions develop strategic plans for making data resulting from federally funded research publicly available. The workshop provided a venue for learning, sharing, and planning to support research universities as they implement systems for public access to research data.  

As part of this work, APLU and AAU released a workshop report that provides a summary of the discussions that occurred during the workshop and an analysis of the common elements of the campus roadmaps. The most common actions in the campus road maps included: updating the campus data policy to support research data sharing; improving graduate student and faculty training on data management and sharing; and engaging in communication and outreach to make the campus community aware of existing resources for data management and data sharing.

The appendices of the workshop report contain the meeting materials, including crowd-sourced resources that support public access to data. Additionally, for the workshop, each institution submitted a brief statement detailing current activities to develop and implement policies, practices, or systems for public access to research data. The applications provide a rich data set detailing the progress and challenges of each institution as of August 2018. 

The intellectual merit of this NSF supported workshop was the development of new knowledge about how research institutions might address the mandate to share research data, as well as create an effective system by coordinating approaches across institutions. The workshop helped institutions develop institutional data access plans, share and document best practices for data access for research universities, and develop some common elements across institutional action plans or roadmaps. The workshop also facilitated greater understanding by institutions of the common challenges to data sharing, existing resources, current federal agency policies, and future directions to help facilitate data access planning.

The broader impact of this work is that greater access to research findings and data will accelerate scientific inquiry and innovation to better serve the public good. Establishing the necessary infrastructure and practices at research universities is critical to realizing the full potential of publicly accessible research data.

Following the workshop in 2018, APLU and AAU undertook synergistic activities that helped to further build on and disseminate the findings from this 2018 workshop. These included:

• Providing funding for three regional convenings to explore how to enact the recommendation and guidance from the 2018 workshop. Princeton University hosted the University of Southern California on September 24, 2019. On March 4-5, 2020, Arizona State University hosted the Research Technology Summit, and included representatives from Penn State University, Children’s Mercy Research Institute – Kansas City, the University of Central Florida, Drexel University, Indiana University, University of Arizona, Georgia Tech, and Northern Arizona University. On April 19-21, 2021, we held a state-wide convening in North Carolina hosted by the University of North Carolina Greensboro and the North Carolina Association for Biomedical Research (NCABR) and included 19 institutions.

• APLU and AAU joined the Association of Research Libraries and the California Digital Library in convening a conference in 2019 and releasing a report with recommendations for data practices supporting an open research ecosystem.  This conference incorporated guidance from the 2018 workshop.

• With funding from the NSF (NSF# 1939279) and National Institutes of Health, APLU and AAU released a Guide to Accelerate Public Access to Research. The guide is based upon previous workshops and conferences that convened teams from many campuses to discuss this important topic, including two National Summits held in February 2019 and March 2020. The associations also hosted a series of webinars on the Guide in May 2021. 

Last Modified: 11/30/2021
Modified by: Kacy Redd