Public Access to Research Results (PARR) intends to increase the accessibility of publications and digital data produced by federal researchers or by recipients of federal funds.
The NOAA PARR plan describes activities that will be undertaken by NOAA in order to meet the goals and requirements of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.
"Environmental data will be visible, accessible and independently understandable to users in a timely manner..."
Source: NOAA Data Sharing Policy
What is Public Access to Research Results (PARR)?
PARR is used as the abbreviated name for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research, issued in 2013. Its intention is to increase the public accessibility of publications and digital data produced by federal researchers or by recipients of federal funds. These results were funded by taxpayers, and improving access to them should help move science and our economy forward.
Details: OSTP PARR Memorandum
NOAA PARR Plan: Introduction
(NOAA) plan to increase Public Access to Research Results (PARR) describes activities that will be undertaken by NOAA in order to meet the goals and requirements of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memorandum Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research aka the OSTP PARR Memo.
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results
NOAA PARR Plan: Core Principles
The Core Principles of the NOAA PARR Plan are:
- Publications and environmental data funded through taxpayer dollars will be made publicly accessible in a timely fashion.
- In the case of articles published by limited-access journals, NOAA will require an embargo period of no more than 12 months prior to free public access, consistent with guidance from OSTP.
- Additional paperwork, administrative hurdles, and reporting requirements for researchers creating data or publications will be minimized.
- Existing activities, systems, and approaches will be leveraged and reused to minimize duplicative, incompatible, or wasted effort.
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results
NOAA PARR Plan: Basic Requirements
Basic Requirements of the NOAA PARR Plan are:
- NOAA Programs producing data will allocate resources for data access and archiving
- NOAA Program Managers will enforce PARR requirements
- NOAA data producers will develop data management plans, including:
- Developing appropriate metadata
- Submitting data to archive
- Making data publicly accessible
- NOAA grantees ("extramural data producers") will include data management ("sharing") plan with proposal, including
- Making data independently understandable (well documented with structured metadata)
- Making data visible (discoverable)
- Making data accessible
- Archiving appropriate data, in cooperation with NOAA, at existing Data Centers
- NOAA will assign permanent identifiers (DOI) to archived data sets and provide guidelines for data citations in publications
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results
Who does the NOAA PARR Plan apply to?
NOAA PARR Plan applies, in whole or in part, to NOAA Programs, NOAA federal employees, NOAA contractors, and proposers or recipients of NOAA grants or cooperative agreements, if their work produces, or commissions the production of, environmental data or publications.
The NOAA Data Sharing Policy will be revised by EDMC to impose requirements both on NOAA Programs that issue grants and on grant recipients, and to indicate that grant programs must consider whether the resulting data are likely to be worthy of archiving. All grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements will include requirements for data management planning consistent with the goals of the Data Sharing Policy.
Terms and Conditions will include language that requires scientists seeking funding to describe how and where they will make their data available to the public and explicitly require the data that underlie the conclusions of peer-reviewed scientific publications be made available for discovery, retrieval, and analysis for free at the time of publication. Appropriate exceptions to these guidelines will also be outlined.
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results
NOAA PARR Compliance Timeline
New policies or policy changes established by the NOAA PARR Plan are scheduled to be in effect by June 30, 2016.
NOAA intends to have intramural publications and data comply first, followed by extramural results. This will enable NOAA to test new requirements and processes internally before imposing them externally.
The OSTP memo is not retrospective. New policies or policy changes established by the NOAA PARR Plan shall apply only to environmental data generated or manuscripts submitted after the publication date of the respective policies. Once the plans take effect, agencies shall report twice yearly (January 1 and July 1) to OSTP and OMB.
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results
How can NCEI help with PARR compliance?
NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is the Nation's leading authority for environmental information. NCEI has expertise in ensuring the long-term preservation of scientific data, and has well-established repositories for scientific data in digital formats. NCEI is responsible for hosting and providing access to one of the most significant archives on earth, with comprehensive oceanic, atmospheric, and geophysical data.
NCEI has training and tools for metadata creation and for automatically assessing metadata completeness. NOAA user engagement and feedback occurs at the NCEI through customer service and user engagement specialists. NOAA Data Centers are the only entities authorized to issue NOAA digital dataset identifiers (e.g., DOIs).
Details: NOAA Plan for Increasing Public Access to Research Results