Dear Colleague Letter: Innovations in Open Science (IOS) Planning Workshops (nsf23141) | NSF – National Science Foundation

“The recent memo titled “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,” also referred to as the Nelson Memo1, issued by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), has provided policy guidance to federal agencies on public access requirements for federally funded research. The need for a better, innovative data and research infrastructure that embraces open science principles to serve the interconnected scientific communities has never been as urgent.

Through this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences (AGS) in the Directorate for Geosciences (GEO) is calling for workshop proposals2 focused on identifying critical needs for innovations in open science for data infrastructure that can serve the research community at a national-needs level, and have the potential to significantly advance research in atmospheric and geospace sciences, ensuring their research outputs, broadly defined, in compliance with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reproducible) principles. The workshop proposals will provide the AGS community an opportunity to come together to discuss needs, best practices, and resources necessary to build a data infrastructure through which open and equitable research can be achieved….”

HOW CAN PUBLIC ACCESS ADVANCE EQUITY AND LEARNING?

“For the first time, multiple federal agencies — convened by the National Science Foundation and the American Association for the Advancement of Science — will come together to lay out their public access plans. 

Early career researchers, university administrators, and scientific societies will have the opportunity to discuss, with a focus on the plans’ equity considerations, including implications for authors seeking to publish new work in different journals, with editorial quality as a continued focus, and making available research data.”

NSF Public Access Plan 2.0

“NSF’s updated public access plan integrates new agency guidance issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in August of 2022. This guidance, which includes zero-embargo public access for research publications and their supporting data, was developed with leadership from the National Science and Technology Council Subcommittee on Open Science, in which NSF has always been actively engaged. NSF developed its plan while considering issues of importance to our many partners across academia and industry, and in alignment with all other U.S. agencies which fund scientific research. This plan is a first step, and we look forward to its further evolution as we address changes in technology and in the needs of members across our communities. Promoting immediate public access to federally funded research results and data is a critically important aspect of achieving the NSF mission of promoting the progress of science, securing the national defense, and advancing the national health, prosperity, and welfare. Indeed, scientific openness, academic freedom, scientific integrity, equity in science, and fairness are American values that rest on the pillar of public access to federally funded research and data….

The sections of this plan describe how NSF will ensure: • That all peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from NSF-funded research will be made freely available and publicly accessible by default in the NSF Public Access Repository, or NSF-PAR, without embargo or delay. • That scientific data associated with peer-reviewed publications resulting from NSF awards will be made available in appropriate scientific disciplinary repositories. • That exceptions to the data-sharing requirements will be made based on legal, privacy, ethical, intellectual property and national security considerations. • That persistent identifiers, or PIDs, and other critical metadata associated with peer-reviewed publications and data resulting from NSF-funded research will be collected and made publicly available in NSF-PAR. • That the agency coordinates with other federal funders of scientific research in implementing new public access requirements….

Primary areas of interest that will shape NSF policy as implementation approaches are formulated include: • Minimizing the equity impact of over-reliance on article processing charges, or APCs, also known as the “Gold Open Access” publication model, including inequity for fields, organizations or researchers lacking access to funding; consequences of possible citation bias; the impact on ability to fund research and training activities; and potential negative impacts with respect to public trust. • Promoting use of author’s accepted manuscripts, or AAMs, as a no-cost option to comply with public access requirements. • Minimizing the consequences of changing publishing ecosystems, including impacts for organizations least able to weather dramatic changes to subscription policies, which can increase precarity for those affiliated with these organizations. • Ameliorating the possible impacts of large APCs on small awards. • Involving affected communities regarding issues associated with data collection, data governance, verifying permitted data access, and data destruction, particularly for groups that have previously suffered from the appropriation or misuse of data. 19 • Ensure accessibility of data and results, including access to data cyberinfrastructures for under-resourced and underserved institutions/researchers, as well as considerations for persons with visual disabilities. 20 • Maximizing the reach and impact of U.S. research while seeking to minimize both access barriers in underresourced and underserved communities and challenges related to the language or interpretability of data. • Identifying the full range of costs (tangible and intangible) associated with data provision and addressing any inequities introduced by these costs. • Developing processes for addressing inequities identified in sharing and accessing research findings….”

Building the Prototype Open Knowledge Network (Proto-OKN) | NSF – National Science Foundation

Abstract:  This program supports the creation of a prototype Open Knowledge Network — an interconnected network of knowledge graphs supporting a very broad range of application domains. Open access to shared information is essential for the development and evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-powered solutions needed to address the complex challenges facing the nation and the world. Knowledge graphs, which represent relationships among real-world entities, provide a powerful approach for organizing, representing, integrating, reusing, and accessing data from multiple structured and unstructured sources using ontologies and ontology alignment. Currently, private-sector investments in knowledge graphs power numerous consumer applications including web search, e-commerce, banking, drug discovery, advertising, etc. Undertaking a similar but inclusive, open, and community-driven effort and making use of publicly available data holds the potential to create a platform that would empower government and non-government users — fueling evidence-based policymaking, continued strong economic growth, game-changing scientific breakthroughs, while addressing complex societal challenges from climate change to social equity.

 

Engage on NSF’s Public Access Policy

“The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy this past August issued a memo directing the nation’s major, science-funding agencies, including NSF, to ensure free, immediate, and equitable access to the products of federally-supported research. The required updates to the policy will have direct and lasting impacts on NSF internal and external stakeholders, including researchers, research institutions, scholarly societies, research libraries and the universities they support, and publishers. NSF’s Working Group on Public Access is committed to ensuring that the policy it recommends has been informed by active stakeholder engagement.  This is the only way that NSF’s updated public access policy can be equitable, sustainable and best serve NSF’s broad and diverse community.  

To that end, we will hold a virtual information and listening session at 2:00 PM EST on November 30, 2022. 

 

Participants will be briefed on the history and driving principles of NSF’s public access policy. More importantly, this webinar will serve as a forum for NSF to hear and appreciate what’s on the minds of our stakeholders, and to discuss opportunities and challenges surrounding the update of NSF’s open access policy.”

CU Boulder receives collaborative national grant for open science project | University Libraries | University of Colorado Boulder

“This multi-year research project aspires to establish community-informed recommendations on how to assign persistent identifiers like Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) to research facilities and instrumentation. CU Boulder is also working with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Florida State University on the project to strengthen coordination among researchers in order to advance FAIR data principles and open science practices. 

The “Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable (FAIR) Open Science Facilities and Instruments project is one of 10 projects funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable, Open Science Research Coordination Networks (FAIROS RCN) program. FAIR is a set of international principles that focus on making scientific research more open and transparent.

Johnson said these projects are part of a nationwide attempt to establish norms and best practices to strengthen coordination among researchers to advance fair data principles and open science practices. …”

OPEN KNOWLEDGE NETWORK ROADMAP: POWERING THE NEXT DATA REVOLUTION

“Open access to shared information is essential for the development and evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-powered solutions needed to address the complex challenges facing the nation and the world. The Open Knowledge Network (OKN), an interconnected network of knowledge graphs, would provide an essential public-data infrastructure for enabling an AI-driven future. It would facilitate the integration of diverse data needed to develop solutions to drive continued strong economic growth, expand opportunities, and address complex problems from climate change to social equity. The OKN Roadmap describes the key characteristics of the OKN and essential considerations in taking the effort forward in an effective and sustainable manner….”

NSF releases Open Knowledge Network Roadmap report

“The U.S. National Science Foundation today published the Open Knowledge Network Roadmap – Powering the next data revolution report that outlines a strategy for establishing an open and accessible national resource to power 21st century data science and next-generation artificial intelligence. Establishing such a knowledge infrastructure would integrate the diverse data needed to sustain strong economic growth, expand opportunities to engage in data analysis, and address complex national challenges such as climate change, misinformation, disruptions from pandemics, economic equity and diversity….”

AAI/OC Receives NSF Grant for Collaborative Research Coordination Network – The Alexandria Archive Institute

“We are thrilled to announce Disciplinary Improvements for Past Global Change Research: Connecting Data Systems and Practitioners, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable Open Science Research Coordination Network (FAIROS RCN) funded initiative to advance ethical scientific practices in the use of paleoecological, contemporary ecological, paleoclimatic, and archaeological data….”

ARL Applauds NSF Open Science Investment – Association of Research Libraries

“The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) commends the ongoing commitment of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to open science. NSF today announced awards for 10 new projects focused on building and enhancing coordination among researchers and other stakeholders to advance FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) data principles and open-science practices.

The inaugural awards in NSF’s Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable, Open Science Research Coordination Networks (FAIROS RCN) program represent a pooled investment of over $12.5 million in open science from all directorates comprising NSF. This program is particularly unique given that the 10 projects are composed of 28 distinct NSF awards (detailed below) representing many organizations and institutions in the United States seeking to advance open-science efforts….”

NSF Grant for New STEM-focused Commons | Platypus – the Humanities Commons Blog

by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

The Commons team is delighted to have been awarded one of the inaugural FAIROS RCN grants from the NSF, in order to establish DBER+ Commons. That’s a big pile of acronyms, so here’s a breakdown: the NSF is of course the National Science Foundation, one of the most important federal funding bodies in the United States, and a new funder for us. The FAIROS RCN grant program was launched this year by the NSF in order to invest in Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable Open Science (FAIROS) by supporting the formation and development of Research Coordination Networks (RCN) dedicated to those principles.

We have teamed up with a group of amazing folks at Michigan State University who are working across science, technology, engineering, math, and more traditional NSF fields, all of whom are focused on discipline-based education research (DBER) as well as other engaged education research methodologies (the +). Our goal for this project is to bring them together with their national and international collaborators in STEM education to create DBER+ Commons, which will use — and crucially, expand — the affordances of the HCommons network and promote FAIR and CARE (Collective Benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) practices, principles, and guidelines in undergraduate, postbaccalaureate, graduate, and postdoctoral science education research activities.

 

Association of Polar Early Career Scientists – IARPC Program Manager Chat – Supporting Open Polar and Cryospheric Science at NSF and NASA

“The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) announces their upcoming IARPC Program Manager Chat: Supporting Open Polar and Cryospheric Science at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The webinar will take place 31 May 2022, 12:00-1:00 p.m. AKDT.

Webinar Description:

The new Arctic Research Plan 2022-2026 articulates the need for continued work towards ethically open data and research practices. But what does “open science” mean for Arctic research funders? And how can you get funding to support it?

Join this IARPC Program Officer Chat with Thorsten Markus and Kaitlin Harbeck (Program Officers for Cryospheric Sciences at NASA) and Allen Pope and Kelly Brunt (Program Officers in the NSF Office for Polar Programs) to talk about what open science means in their programs, and how NASA and NSF provide funding and support to advance open polar and cryospheric science. After short presentations, there will be ample time for questions with the panel of program officers….”

Dear Colleague Letter: Effective Practices for Making Research Data Discoverable and Citable (Data Sharing) (nsf22055) | NSF – National Science Foundation

“This Dear Colleague Letter describes and encourages effective practices for publicly sharing research data, including the use of persistent digital identifiers (PDIs).

Datasets underpinning published research findings are expected to be shared with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time. Data-sharing holds numerous benefits, from enabling broader research collaboration, through facilitating transparency and solidifying confidence in scientific research, to providing increased resources for teaching and education purposes. Recent studies found that research articles containing a link to data in a repository have markedly higher usage and visibility. Discoverable and citable data also serve to reduce barriers to entry for junior researchers, scientists in under-served communities, and researchers from underrepresented and minority groups, thus enabling improved implementation of open science principles.

The nature of digital data produced during research may vary among the different topical disciplines encompassed by the field of Materials Research. Most often, digital research data comprise one or more of the following: raw data files collected using experimental instrumentation and converted into digital format; digital files of processed experimental data; video and animation files; numerical data produced by computer simulations or computational models; computer code, scripts, software, software documentation and user manuals developed as part of the research project; digital files of theoretical models, protocols, and methods; educational, instructional, and training materials.

Open-access data sharing platforms (data repositories) comprise the most efficient way to publish and share research data1. Moreover, as long-term data curation and preservation are core to their mission, data repositories provide a stable means for data preservation. Upon publication of a dataset, most repositories automatically generate a citation for the data, which includes identifying metadata such as the archiving repository, the data’s author(s), and a PDI such as a digital object identifier (DOI). A DOI is a unique and persistent digital identifier, which, when assigned to a digital entity such as a dataset, remains unchanged over the lifetime of the object. Having a DOI (or other form of PDI) from an open-access repository renders data findable, accessible, and readily citable. Searchable global registries of data repositories provide information on indexed repositories to help researchers identify the most appropriate ones2. In the case where a suitable repository is not available, researchers are strongly encouraged to use their institutional digital repositories, which typically issue DOIs to institutionally hosted content….”