Carter, Caitlin

Cox-York, Kimberly

Haricombe, Lorraine

English

Texas ScholarWorks

12/7/23, 12:19 PM Carterhttps://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/rt/printerFriendly/26146/34086 1/4OCollege & Research Libraries News, Vol 84, No 11(2023)Scholarly CommunicationCaitlin Carter, Kimberly Cox-York, and Lorraine HaricombeThe Nelson MemorandumHow two HELIOS members are respondingCaitlin Carter is program manager for HELIOS, email: caitlin@orfg.org (mailto:caitlin@orfg.org) . Kimberly Cox-York isresearch integrity officer at Colorado State University, email: kimberly.cox-york@colostate.edu (mailto:kimberly.cox-york@colostate.edu) . Lorraine Haricombe is vice provost and director of the University of Texas Libraries at TheUniversity of Texas at Austin, email: ljharic@austin.utexas.edu (mailto:ljharic@austin.utexas.edu) .© 2023 Caitlin Carter, Kimberly Cox-York, and Lorraine Haricomben August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandumon Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,1 also known as theNelson Memorandum, that significantly alters the open scholarship landscape. The new policy guidanceadvances previous federal policy2 in a number of impactful ways. The directive applies to all federalagencies, removes the previous 12-month embargo period on article sharing, directs federal agencies toupdate their policies on data sharing to enable immediate access to the data underlying published studies, expands thedefinition of publications, calls for agencies to share publication metadata and to require the use of persistent identifier(PIDs), and more.3The Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) responded right away, convening membersfor a virtual briefing by Alondra Nelson, who at the time served as deputy assistant to the president and deputy directorfor science and society of the White House OSTP, and Christopher Marcum, then-assistant director for open scienceand data policy at the OSTP. Both contextualized the public access guidance within the Biden Administration’s largerpriorities and described how climate change, social inequity, and COVID-19 are compelling, real-world examples of thecritical and urgent need for release of data. Additionally, the policy is an important part of upholding and supportingresearch integrity to protect and restore public trust in scholarship, to help keep track of investments, and maintainaccountability through a public record. The Nelson Memorandum offers higher education the opportunity to promoteequity and transparency in research through public access compliance. However, colleges and universities areresponsible for implementing changes (to infrastructure, policies, training, and more) to comply with new and changingrequirements.HELIOS backgroundHELIOS has a robust network of 96 colleges and universities committed to collective action to advance openscholarship within and across their campuses. Open scholarship is closely aligned with the goals of ensuring publicaccess to research: transparency, collaboration, equity, and more. As part of joining HELIOS, an institution’s leadershipagrees to elevate open scholarship as a strategic priority at the institution and designates a senior representative to joiHELIOS’ community of practice focused on complementary aspects of the open scholarship landscape. Collectively,HELIOS representatives are working to make open scholarship easier for individual researchers and the institutions thasupport them; to align incentive structures like hiring and reappointment, promotion, and tenure (RPT) to properlyreward open activities such as data sharing and open access; to stimulate durable, scalable infrastructure that supportopen scholarship; and to coordinate with like-minded activities in the governmental, philanthropic, and professionalsociety sectors, including federal agencies updating or establishing new public access policies.12/7/23, 12:19 PM Carterhttps://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/rt/printerFriendly/26146/34086 2/4The Nelson Memorandum inspired and catalyzed HELIOS’ workstreams in the following ways.1. It spurred cross-sector conversations with agencies at a winter 2022 working session about alignment with federapriorities in the categories of incentives, infrastructure, research output tracking, and more.42. HELIOS is collaborating with NASA by celebrating 2023 as the Year of Open Science, an effort that supports theNelson Memorandum and the shift to open science as the norm.53. HELIOS open source experts collaborated with leaders of the Open Research Funders Group (ORFG) to shareresearch software policy guidance.6 The piece, published in PLOS Biology, was spurred by cross-sector sharingwith members of the White House Subcommittee on the Year of Open Science.4. HELIOS is collaborating with Florida International University, who was awarded a NASA grant to host a January2024 workshop for presidents and provosts in recognition of the anniversary of the federal Year of Open Science.This convening will focus on developing a collective action strategy for embedding open scholarship within highereducation incentive structures.The communication channels are open and collaborative, but it is becoming clear that individual institutions are stilltesting approaches to implementing policy compliance considerations and learning how to marry their institutionalvalues to emerging public access goals.The Nelson Memorandum has sparked cross-campus work to update compliance training and guidance, complementecross-campus collaborations between research integrity officers and libraries, and stimulated rich programming oncampus. Two institutions reflect on how their campuses are preparing for and responding to the new directive.Supporting open scholarship at The University ofTexas at AustinThe University of Texas at Austin (UT) has a long history of supporting open scholarship to improve understanding andadoption of open scholarship activities and incentives including open access (OA) publishing, open educationalresources, open data management, and investment in a scholarly publishing system that provides maximum access tohigh-quality information to the greatest number of users in a sustainable way.This commitment is manifested through multiple UT Libraries initiatives, including varied OA open data infrastructureand training7 with direct author benefits. UT Libraries highlight and advance good practices of sustainable scholarshipby noting examples of disciplinary and institutional repositories for authors interested in self-archiving to make theirwork openly available. The Research Data Services unit builds, maintains, and enhances the data services deployed bUT Libraries and provides high-quality training in data management practices across disciplines through consultationsessions, LibGuide content, and workshops that provide open learning opportunities. Through membership in the TexaDigital Library, UT Libraries also provides infrastructure to support the open access repository, Texas ScholarWorks,and data repository, Texas Data Repository, as a free service to the entire UT community. The Texas Digital Libraryhosts Open Access journals through the Open Journal Systems platform as well as UT’s electronic theses anddissertation submission system, Vireo.Garnering support for the benefit of public access includes campus-wide engagement and institutional commitment toopen scholarship. At UT, previous campus-wide discussions about Sustainable Open Scholarship (SOS), initiated bythe Provost’s Office in fall 2020, set precedent to build on previous open scholarship support after the NelsonMemorandum’s release. The SOS report8 noted key outcomes that acknowledged UT’s strong support for the principleof open access—that knowledge should be disseminated without restrictions—and that UT will enhance its globalimpact as a leading public R1 university by taking a leadership role in open scholarship. UT joined HELIOS in 2022 tofurther confirm institutional support for open scholarship.While cross-campus discussions with various groups can raise awareness about the benefits of open scholarship, UTalso recognizes the need for cross-campus, institutionalized units that support researchers’ open scholarship and publaccess compliance needs. In summer 2023, UT was awarded a Sloan Foundation grant to create the university’s OpenSource Program Office (OSPO), which will bring together and enhance existing activities from several units and schooas a single, branded, and coordinated effort across the university with staff from the Texas Advanced Computing Cente(TACC); the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors (OVPRSCE); the UTLibraries; the Information Technology Transformation Office (ITT); and expert open source researchers in the UTcommunity. Institutionalized support for open source projects with campus-wide collaboration will benefit future efforts tmake compliance with funder policies easier and more rewarding for the researchers that UT supports.The fall 2023 Texas Open Science Summit (TOSS)9 raised awareness about the importance of the NelsonMemorandum and continued UT’s discussions about open scholarship and public access compliance, incentives, and12/7/23, 12:19 PM Carterhttps://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/rt/printerFriendly/26146/34086 3/4good practices. This forum offered a publicly visible opportunity for scholars and open access advocates in the regionand state of Texas to learn more about the federal Year of Open Science and support structures at UT. Specifically, theTOSS event offered an opportunity to celebrate the federal Year of Open Science byraising awareness of the 2022 Nelson memo;engaging individuals from across the UT campus and beyond in a discussion of progress to date and growingopportunities;creating some excitement and elevated interest from the campus research community;strengthening engagement with the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and CreativeEndeavors (OVPRSCE) to coordinate and facilitate our work in the national and federal context and showcasUT’s leadership in advocating for open scholarship;raising greater awareness of the work that HELIOS is doing to take collective action to advance openscholarship; andelevating the creation of an OSPO to support open source and open science at UT.With these new developments, TOSS provided space to celebrate UT’s progress and commitment to advancing openscholarship and was an opportunity to inspire the research community to move beyond viewing public access through lens of compliance and toward a view of collaborative opportunities.Supporting open scholarship and research integrityat Colorado State UniversityLike many institutions, Colorado State University (CSU) is continuously balancing the needs of the research communitThis includes training and support for participants with research awards that come with regulations and mandates fromstate and federal funding bodies.Prior to the release of the Nelson Memorandum, professionals from Data Management and Open Access units in thelibraries, Research Computing and Cyberinfrastructure from the Division of IT, and Research Integrity from the Office othe Vice President for Research (OVPR) created a working group with the goal of improving communication, resourcestraining, and infrastructure to support research integrity. The Nelson Memorandum, along with other initiatives like theNational Institutes of Health (NIH) implementation of the Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) validatedcampus efforts and provided support for expanding work. Building on a long history of open access support, the CSULibraries has since created the Advanced Research and Scholarship Support group,10 providing resources for datamanagement planning and openly sharing research outputs. The working group hosted the Opentober Event,highlighting initiatives and support services for furthering open scholarship and public access compliance at CSU.CSU is recognizing the federal Year of Open Science through its participation in HELIOS, which CSU joined in 2022.Kevin Worthington, the geospatial data manager for the CSU Geospatial Centroid partnered with HELIOS’ GoodPractices in Open Scholarship Working Group to create an interactive map11 highlighting open scholarship initiativesongoing at HELIOS institutions across the country. The map can be used to locate events, resources, and collaboratorto further open scholarship and public access priorities.In considering implementation of the Nelson Memorandum priorities, and what the research community needs tocomply with emerging policies, it is increasingly important to embed open scholarship guidance in the curriculum,required training, and regular practices of the research community. The Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR)program at CSU has been embedding open scholarship principles in RCR education for several years in the form ofdata management plans (now data management and sharing plan and regular, targeted rigor, reproducibility, andtransparency training. These efforts have inspired CSU to create a position that combines RCR and open scholarshipstrategy under the OVPR. This alignment and positioning on campus provides formal structure to integrate openscholarship principles and standards, as they evolve, into RCR training in real time. Given the expanded requirementsfor RCR training to principal investigators and key personnel, CSU has the opportunity to reach senior investigators whcan embed the concepts into their research and scholarly practices alongside their compliance efforts. The program hacreated a community of practice composed of instructors of more than 20 approved face-to-face RCR courses acrosscampus. The community will employ, co-develop, and share evolving open materials and resources that embed openscholarship into research, methods, and RCR courses at every level.Through connections made during CSU’s co-leadership of the HELIOS Cross-Sector Alignment Working Group and insupport of public access compliance, CSU is also collaborating with Cornell University to develop a pitch deck forcompliance units to identify and request resources for the necessary integration of open scholarship into existingresearch compliance frameworks. While each institution is unique in structure and approach, there are some commonneeds and gaps identified. Alignment of training, support, and compliance will allow institutions to invest fully in openscholarship beyond a compliance effort.12/7/23, 12:19 PM Carterhttps://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/rt/printerFriendly/26146/34086 4/4ConclusionTo prepare for emerging public access policies, colleges and universities are building upon their previous awarenessraising efforts, promoting new programs and resources, updating their training, and expanding institutionalizedstructures to comply with funder policies. Simultaneously, schools are also collaborating to ensure that open scholarshpractices are easier and more rewarding for both researchers and the institutions that support them.Notes1. Alondra Nelson, “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research,” memorandumUS Office of Science and Technology Policy, August 25, 2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-access-Memo.pdf (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-access-Memo.pdf) .2. John P. Holdren, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research,” memorandum, USOffice of Science and Technology Policy, February 22, 2013,https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_201(https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf) .3. Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship, “HELIOS Analysis of New OSTP Guidance,” August30, 2022, https://www.heliosopen.org/news/updates-white-house-ostp-guidance(https://www.heliosopen.org/news/updates-white-house-ostp-guidance) .4. HELIOS Cross-Sector Alignment Working Group “Asks and Offers,” info graphic, last updated December 1, 2022,https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61b3819ed113b0380812d182/t/638908d3fbe002564e4f80d1/1669925Sector+Alignment+Asks+and+Offers.pdf(https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61b3819ed113b0380812d182/t/638908d3fbe002564e4f80d1/1669925077772/CroSector+Alignment+Asks+and+Offers.pdf) .5. Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship, “HELIOS Collaborates on US Federal Government’sYear of Open Science,” January 11, 2023, https://www.heliosopen.org/news/announcing-helios-collaboration-with-nasa-nsf-and-xx-other-agencies-on-the-white-houses-2023-year-of-open-science(https://www.heliosopen.org/news/announcing-helios-collaboration-with-nasa-nsf-and-xx-other-agencies-on-the-white-houses-2023-year-of-open-science) .6. Erin C. McKiernan, Lorena Barba, Philip E. Bourne, Caitlin Carter, Zach Chandler, Sayeed Choudhury, StephenJacobs, Daniel S. Katz, Stefanie Lieggi, Beth Plale, and Greg Tananbaum, “Policy recommendations to ensurethat research software is openly accessible and reusable,” PLOS Biology 21, no. 7 (2023): e3002204.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002204 (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002204) .7. The University of Texas at Austin Libraries, “Open Access Initiative Support,” The University of Texas at AustinLibraries, last updated October 21, 2023, https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa/currentOAinitiatives(https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/oa/currentOAinitiatives) .8. “Sustainable Open Scholarship Working Group,” The University of Texas at Austin Office of the Executive VicePresident and Provost, 2023, https://provost.utexas.edu/initiatives/sustainable-open-scholarship-working-group/ (https://provost.utexas.edu/initiatives/sustainable-open-scholarship-working-group/) .9. “Join Us for the Texas Open Science Summit,” The University of Texas at Austin Libraries, 2023,https://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/join-us-texas-open-science-summit(https://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/join-us-texas-open-science-summit) .10. “Advanced Research and Scholarship Support,” Colorado State University Libraries, accessed November 10,2023, https://lib.colostate.edu/services/research-scholarship-support-services/(https://lib.colostate.edu/services/research-scholarship-support-services/) .11. “Open Scholarship Map (beta),” Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship, accessed Novembe10, 2023, https://www.heliosopen.org/open-scholarship-map-beta (https://www.heliosopen.org/open-scholarship-map-beta) .

The Nelson Memorandum: How two HELIOS members are responding

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The Nelson Memorandum: How two HELIOS members are responding

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