On February 22, 2013, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Dr. John Holdren, issued a memorandum to all agency and department heads entitled, “Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Scientific Research.”  The memo directed federal agencies with more than $100 million in annual conduct of research and development to develop plans for increasing public access to peer-reviewed scientific publications and digital data resulting from federally funded research investments.

In response to the OSTP memo, DOE has completed a Public Access Plan, which commits the Department to deploying a web-based portal, the DOE Public Access Gateway for Energy and Science (DOE PAGES), that will make scholarly scientific publications resulting from DOE research funding publicly accessible and searchable at no charge to readers; and to instituting data management principles and requirements that ultimately will apply to proposals for research funding submitted to all DOE program offices.