Impact of the 2022 OSTP Memo: A Bibliometric Analysis of U.S. Federally Funded Publications, 2017-2021

TL;DR

This study analyzes U.S. federally funded publications from 2017 to 2021 to assess the impact of the 2022 OSTP memo eliminating embargo periods, focusing on publication characteristics and open access status.

Contribution

It provides a detailed bibliometric analysis of federally funded research outputs before and after the 2022 OSTP policy change, which was previously lacking.

Findings

Average of 265,000 federally funded articles published annually

Analysis of publication distribution by publisher, journal, and institution

Insights into open access status of federally funded research

Abstract

On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memo regarding public access to scientific research. Signed by Director Alondra Nelson, this updated guidance eliminated the 12-month embargo period on publications arising from U.S. federal funding that had been allowed from a previous 2013 OSTP memo. While reactions to this updated federal guidance have been plentiful, to date there has not been a detailed analysis of the publications which would fall under this new framework. The OSTP released a companion report along with the memo, but it only provided a broad estimate of total numbers affected per year. Therefore, this study seeks to more deeply investigate the characteristics of U.S. federally funded research over a 5-year period from 2017-2021 to better understand the updated guidance's impact. It uses a manually created custom filter in the Dimensions database to return only publications that arise from U.S. federal funding. Results show that an average of 265,000 articles were published each year that acknowledge U.S. federal funding agencies, and these research outputs are further examined by publisher, journal title, institutions, and Open Access status. Interactive versions of the graphs are available online at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.