Public Access To Federally Funded Research

Public access to federally-funded research: hearing before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, July 29, 2010.

Public access to federally-funded research: hearing before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress, second session, July 29, 2010.

Research universities are critical contributors to our national research enterprise. They are the principal source of a world-class labor force and fundamental discoveries that enhance our lives and the lives of others around the world. These institutions help to create an educated citizenry capable of making informed and crucial choices as participants in a democratic society. However many are concerned that the unintended cumulative effect of federal regulations undercuts the productivity of the research enterprise and diminishes the return on the federal investment in research. Optimizing the Nation's Investment in Academic Research reviews the regulatory framework as it currently exists, considers specific regulations that have placed undue and often unanticipated burdens on the research enterprise, and reassesses the process by which these regulations are created, reviewed, and retired. This review is critical to strengthen the partnership between the federal government and research institutions, to maximize the creation of new knowledge and products, to provide for the effective training and education of the next generation of scholars and workers, and to optimize the return on the federal investment in research for the benefit of the American people.

This report presents current policy practice to promote access to publicly funded data for science, technology and innovation, as well as policy challenges for the future. It examines national policies and international initiatives, and identifies seven issues that require policy attention.

The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA), passed by Congress in 1993, requires that federal agencies write five-year strategic plans with annual performance goals and produce an annual report that demonstrates whether the goals have been met. The first performance reports are due in March 2000. Measuring the performance of basic research is particularly challenging because major breakthroughs can be unpredictable and difficult to assess in the short term. This book recommends that federal agencies use an "expert review" method to examine the quality of research they support, the relevance of that research to their mission, and whether the research is at the international forefront of scientific and technological knowledge. It also addresses the issues of matching evaluation measurements to the character of the research performed, improving coordination among agencies when research is in the same field, and including a human resource development component in GPRA strategic and performance plans.