The Nelson Memorandum: How two HELIOS members are responding

Abstract

On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum on Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research, also known as the Nelson Memorandum, that significantly alters the open scholarship landscape. The new policy guidance advances previous federal policy in a number of impactful ways. The directive applies to all federal agencies, removes the previous 12-month embargo period on article sharing, directs federal agencies to update their policies on data sharing to enable immediate access to the data underlying published studies, expands the definition of publications, calls for agencies to share publication metadata and to require the use of persistent identifiers (PIDs), and more.

The Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) responded right away, convening members for a virtual briefing by Alondra Nelson, who at the time served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy director for science and society of the White House OSTP, and Christopher Marcum, then-assistant director for open science and data policy at the OSTP. Both contextualized the public access guidance within the Biden Administration’s larger priorities and described how climate change, social inequity, and COVID-19 are compelling, real-world examples of the critical and urgent need for release of data. Additionally, the policy is an important part of upholding and supporting research integrity to protect and restore public trust in scholarship, to help keep track of investments, and maintain accountability through a public record. The Nelson Memorandum offers higher education the opportunity to promote equity and transparency in research through public access compliance. However, colleges and universities are responsible for implementing changes (to infrastructure, policies, training, and more) to comply with new and changing requirements.