Research Access

Journal Articles | STI Program Involvement | Important Links

What is Research Access?

The Research Access initiative is part of the agency’s framework for increasing public access to scientific publications and digital scientific data.

The initiative follows the release of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) memorandum “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research,” to ensure federally funded research is available to the public within one year of publication.

NASA answered the mandate by creating an agency plan entitled “NASA Plan for Increasing Access to the Results of Scientific Research” and associated policy, NPD 2230.1, Research Data and Publication Access.

Public Access to Results of NASA-Funded Research

NASA has developed an agency plan and associated policy outlining a framework for activities to increase public access to scientific publications and digital scientific data resulting from NASA-funded research.

Data Management: NASA-funded intramural (i.e., civil servants) and extramural (i.e., non-civil servants) researchers receiving grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts for research are required to follow NASA’s policy to develop data management plans as part of their NASA funding proposals that describe how they will provide for long-term preservation of, and access to, their unclassified scientific data in digital format in NASA-approved repositories.

Publication Management: NASA-funded authors and co-authors (both intramural and extramural) will be required to deposit the accepted manuscript version of their peer-reviewed scientific publications and associated data into the agency’s accepted manuscript repository, NASA PubSpace. This excludes patents, publications that contain material governed by personal privacy, export control, proprietary restrictions, or national security law or regulations.

Journal Article Versions Explained:

  • Preprint – The journal article version that is submitted to the journal publisher to request acceptance and publication.
  • Accepted Manuscript – The version of the journal article that has been accepted for publication by a journal publisher and includes changes requested by the publisher and made by the author during the peer-review process. It typically includes the same content as the published article in the journal but frequently (not always) does not include the publisher’s form or format.  This is the version collected for PubSpace.
  • Reprint – The version that is published in the journal by the publisher. It will typically have the date of publication and volume number. Some Federal agencies and publishers also call these the Version of Record manuscript.

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STI Program Involvement

NASA’s Scientific and Technical Information Program manages several areas of the Research Access activity as part of our mission to support the advancement of knowledge and contributing to U.S. competitiveness in space science and aerospace research and development.

The STI Program supports the Research Access activity by:

  • Staffing the NASA Research Access Help
  • Processing and depositing intramural author manuscripts and supplemental data to NIH
  • Maintaining NASA extramural author funding and ORCID database
  • Providing support to extramural authors utilizing the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system and assisting with deposits of author manuscripts and supplemental data
  • Providing support to all NASA Centers for this Research Access activity
  • Maintaining a comprehensive collection of NASA-authored and NASA-funded publications in the NASA STI Repository (NTRS)

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Contact Us!

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the NASA Research Access Help Desk.

NASA Research Access Help Desk

Contact Form: Research Access Help Desk
Phone: (757) 864-6736
If calling, you may experience longer than usual response times.

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