White House seeks input on how to share government research

White House officials have launched the final phase of a public forum designed to determine the best way to make federally funded research projects available to the public, according to a blog post by Diane DiEuliis, assistant director for life sciences at the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

This third and final phase began Jan. 1 and will conclude Jan. 7. The agency is specifically looking at how to manage public access to government research, according to the Jan. 1 blog post. OSTP wants to answer questions that include:

• What are the best mechanisms to ensure compliance?
• What would be the best metrics of success?
  
• What are the best examples of usability in the private sector?

In the first phase of the forum, the public weighed in on which agencies should enact public access policies and how those policies should be designed. In phase two, participants provided insight on how the federal government can make its collections of peer-reviewed papers more useful to the public.

In the final phase, officials also hope to learn how a public-private partnership could manage a public access policy. Officials also want to know if there are examples already in use that may serve as models for the program.

“We invite your comments and in particular encourage you to be specific in your thoughts and proposals, providing empirical data and specific supporting examples whenever possible so this discussion can generate maximum practical value,” DiEuliis stated.

The public can comment via a blog with voting capabilities.

“Importantly, this is a community-moderated blog,” DiEuliis said. “That means we count on you to keep the forum focused and on topic — something you can do by ‘voting’ on comments.”

In this case, voting up a comment expresses approval of the relevance on an idea. If enough people vote down a comment, the comment in question collapses into a link so that it doesn’t interrupt the flow of discussion.