ARTICLE DE RECHERCHE - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

ARTICLE DE RECHERCHE

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo:
A bibliometric analysis of US federally
funded publications, 2017–2021

un accès ouvert

journal

University Library, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

Eric Schares

Mots clés: Dimensions, embargo, federally funded research, Open Access, OSTP memo, public
access

ABSTRAIT

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.
Although reactions to this updated federal guidance have been plentiful, to date there has not
been a detailed analysis of the publications that would fall under this new framework. Le
OSTP released a companion report along with the memo, but it only provided a broad
estimate of total numbers affected per year. Donc, 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 US 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 at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

INTRODUCTION

On August 25, 2022, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP),
under Director Alondra Nelson, released new policy guidance entitled “Ensuring Free, Imme-
diate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” (Nelson, 2022). The memo states
que, par 2026:

“all peer-reviewed scholarly publications authored or coauthored by individuals or insti-
tutions resulting from federally funded research are made freely available and publicly
accessible by default in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay
after publication” [emphasis preserved from original]

This new policy framework is an update to previous guidance on public access to sci-
entific research. UN 2013 policy released by Director John Holdren allowed a 12-month
embargo on publications arising from federal funding, and only applied to federal agen-
cies that granted over $100 million annually (Holdren, 2013). Par contre, the new 2022 Nelson memo eliminates the possibility of a 12-month embargo period for federally Citation: Schares, E. (2023). Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo: A bibliometric analysis of US federally funded publications, 2017–2021. Études scientifiques quantitatives, 4(1), 1–21. https://doi .org/10.1162/qss_a_00237 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00237 Peer Review: https://www.webofscience.com/api /gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162 /qss_a_00237 Supporting Information: https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00237 Received: 26 Octobre 2022 Accepté: 18 Décembre 2022 Auteur correspondant: Eric Schares eschares@iastate.edu Handling Editor: Ludo Waltman Copyright: © 2023 Eric Schares. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC PAR 4.0) Licence. The MIT Press l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : / / direct . m je t . / e d u q s s / art – pdlf / / / / / 4 1 1 2 0 7 8 4 4 9 q s s _ a _ 0 0 2 3 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo funded peer-reviewed research articles that was allowed under the previous 2013 guid- ance. It also extends guidance to the data underlying those publications, strengthens the data-sharing plans, contains specific metadata requirements, and applies to all U.S. federal their annual granting amounts (Marcum & Donohue, granting agencies regardless of 2022). The Association of Research Libraries has released a summary table outlining the details of the 2013 et 2022 OSTP memos for ease of comparison (Association of Research Libraries, 2022b). Reactions to the Nelson memo have been plentiful and varied, with the release garner- ing national news coverage (Patel, 2022). Libraries (Association of Research Libraries, 2022un), universities (Association of American Universities, 2022), librarians (Moore, 2022; Anderson, 2022), societies (SPARC, 2022; European Science Foundation, 2022), consultants (Clarke & Esposito, 2022; Pollock & Michael, 2022), publishers (Association of American Publishers, 2022; PLOS, 2022; IOP Publishing, 2022), funders (Tananbaum, 2022), and researchers (American Anthropological Association, 2022) have weighed in the development with statements or opinion pieces, some more enthusiastic about than others. Chairwoman of the House Committee on Science, Espace, and Technology Eddie Bernice Johnson and Ranking Member Frank Lucas sent a joint letter to the newly con- firmed Director of the OSTP, Dr Arati Prabhakar asking for clarifications (Johnson & Lucas, 2022). Questions still remain about the 2026 implementation and how specific practices will result from this new guidance, how agencies will update their policies, and concerns about participation in research if article processing charges (APCs) are increased or used more widely. 2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS In addition to the 2022 memo, the OSTP also released a companion report on the potential economic impact of the updated guidance and its effects on federal grant funding agency policies (Office of Science and Technology Policy, 2022). The report estimates “between 195,000 et 263,000 articles were federally funded in 2020” but does not provide a more granular breakdown of these articles. An additional analysis estimates 197,000 federally funded articles in 2021 (Petrou, 2022). Other than these high-level studies, there have been limited analyses to more fully detail the characteristics of publications that fall within this newly expanded scope. Donc, this study seeks to address the following research questions: RQ1 How many U.S. federally funded publications have there been over the past 5 années? What are the yearly totals, and what proportion do these represent of worldwide and U.S.-specific output? RQ2 Which U.S. federal funding agencies awarded these grants? RQ3 How do the number of federally funded articles vary by research category/ discipline? RQ4 Which publishers tend to publish federally funded articles? RQ5 Which journals tend to publish federally funded articles? RQ6 Which research institutions are authors who tend to publish federally funded articles affiliated with? RQ7 In what manner were these federally funded articles published? Were they published openly or behind a paywall? Études scientifiques quantitatives 2 l Téléchargé à partir du site Web : / / direct . m je t . / e d u q s s / art – pdlf / / / / / 4 1 1 2 0 7 8 4 4 9 q s s _ a _ 0 0 2 3 7 pd . f par invité 0 7 Septembre 2 0 2 3 Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo 3. METHODOLOGY The analysis was conducted using the bibliometric database Dimensions, available at https:// app.dimensions.ai. This study used the paid version of the tool; there is also a free version available, though with limited functionality. Dimensions ingests metadata from Crossref to make connections across publications, authors, funders, institutions, and more (Herzog, Hook, & Konkiel, 2020). The database uses this as a starting point and further enriches funding infor- mation by analyzing text provided in authors’ acknowledgments sections and through agree- ments with publishers to obtain additional funding information. Dimensions was chosen for this study because of relevant advantages over other commonly used bibliometric databases. It indexes a wider range of journals and has more complete cov- erage than Web of Science, which is estimated to cover only 10–12% of journals (Clarivate, 2021). OpenAlex, a free and open bibliographic database, also uses metadata reported to Crossref by publishers, as well as data from the now-discontinued Microsoft Academic Graph, scraping publisher websites, and other sources (Priem, Piwowar, & Orr, 2022). Cependant, OpenAlex does not include funding information in its records of works. This study is particularly affected by funding information that is deposited to Crossref and included in Dimensions. The availability of major metadata elements in Crossref was quanti- fied by van Eck and Waltman (2021), who found 25% of articles in 2020 reported some funding information. Kramer and de Jonge (2022) specifically analyzed funder information in several bibliometric data sources and quantified the extraction of additional funding infor- mation from acknowledgment text, going beyond what is deposited by publishers to Crossref. Web de la Science, Scopus, and Dimensions all infer this additional funding information. Dimen- sions reported funding information on 81% of the records in a study of publications by the Dutch Research Council, compared to 67% availability in Crossref. Cependant, the information was inconsistent, with not all publications correctly naming the funder or providing the funder ID. The performance also varied considerably by publisher. A case study deeply analyzing one example funding statement clearly illustrates the diffi- culties in untangling personal, financial, and logistical acknowledgments in the same section. Different bibliometric databases and tools are also shown to have different interpretations of the same funding information (Gibson, van Honk, & Calero-Medina, 2022). 3.1. Two Possible Approaches The most crucial part of this analysis was defining the custom Funder group, which controls which publications are included/excluded in the analysis. The Dimensions web interface offers the ability to create a custom group of any single facet type—in this case, Funders. There were two main options to consider when deciding how to construct this custom group—define what to include, or define what to remove. Attempting to include all federal grant-funding agencies in one custom Funder group was the first attempt. En théorie, this sounds like the simpler approach; only keep those agencies whose funded output would qualify under the new OSTP guidance. En plus, the OSTP economic impact report states that just six federal agencies “account for more than 94 percent of the approximately $150 billion” in federal research and development (Office of Science and
Technology Policy, 2022). This means the filter would be very nearly complete after including
only six agencies.

Cependant, it quickly became apparent that identifying and building one custom filter that
covered all possible agencies, divisions, institutes, centres, and their name variants was not

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

feasible. Par exemple, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a large
federal granting agency. Within it are several Operating Divisions, such as the National
Institute for Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Within each of these
Operating Divisions are further institutes and centers, such as the NIH’s National Institute on
Aging or the Office of AIDS Research. Dimensions enriches the publisher-supplied metadata
from Crossref with additional information from a publication’s acknowledgments section, mais
authors do not consistently identify funder names. Dimensions takes what it can find and does
not further correlate or gather these variants into coherent groups. Depending on what is specif-
ically acknowledged in a publication, the funding information returned may be as granular as a
specific division, or as broad as an entire agency.

With this approach considered unmanageable, work then turned to the second option,
which channeled the sculptor Michelangelo: Remove everything that is not a federal funder.
Cependant, this too had a fatal flaw. Although the funder information was more consistent and the
granular nature of federal data was not a concern, removing private foundations, 501(c)(3)s,
corporations, nonprofits, state agencies, or other organizations had the unintended effect of
also removing desired publications. If an article acknowledged funding from both a foundation
and a federal agency, the fact that the foundation was being removed from the analysis meant
the entire paper would be excluded, even though it did have federal funding and should
rightly be included in the data set.

Donc, the final answer turned out to be a combination of the two approaches.

3.2. Defining Custom Funder Group

With the Dimensions web interface limited to the years 2017–2021 and Country of Funder set
to United States, the Analytical View for Funders was able to quickly export the top 500 fun-
ders to meet those criteria (both federal and nonfederal).

Once the funder names were exported to an Excel sheet, some funders from countries other
than the United States were still present due to publications with support from multiple grants
and international collaborations. Limiting the exported column Country to United States
reduced the number of funders from 500 à 331. It was then a manual task to search each
funder one a time, investigate its status, and determine if it was a federal agency or not. Those
that were found to be foundations, 501(c)(3)s, corporations, nonprofits, state agencies, ou autre
organizations were flagged. Each of these nonfederal funders was then added to a second,
temporary custom Funder group in Dimensions to exclude them all in one large batch.

In the first round of investigation, 193 of the 331 organizations (58%) were determined to
be nonfederal funders, and the process of exporting, filtering, and manual investigation was
repeated two more times. This uncovered 87 et 36 more funding agencies to remove, respecter-
tivement, pour 316 nonfederal funders. The process was halted there, as the nonfederal funders
were showing relatively low publication activity (<156 over 5 years, or approximately 30 publications per year) and there were diminishing returns when going further. With the 316 nonfederal funders excluded, 1.129 million remain- ing. However, this is not number to be concerned with, because by definition it will an undercount. Some papers with federal funding get excluded fact that they also have nonfederal funding. Now agencies are cleaned out, list of exported from Analytical view has only granting remaining, giving a cleaner picture of dispersed fractured naming conventions. These 177 then added custom filter one one, newly qualifying recorded after each agency was added. Quantitative Science Studies 4 l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p : >40%
region of the chart, avec 120 out of 500 data points falling in this range.

Nevertheless, the highest percentage of FF research at the journal level again occurs in jour-
nals that publish relatively few articles overall. Sixty-four journals have 50% or more of their

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Chiffre 5. By journal: US federally funded publications v. total publications. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

total output from U.S. federally funded research. AIDS and Behavior has the highest FF per-
centage at 76%, followed by JCI Insight and the Astronomical Journal, with both over 70%.
Tableau 4 lists the journals with the highest FF percentages and their corresponding numbers.
When looking at percentages of FF research, the large total volume destinations Scientific
Reports and PLOS ONE mentioned earlier both come in at around 16% chaque, with IEEE Access
at slightly less than 3%.

Petrou (2022) looked deeply at the case of four journals in particular, some “of the most
prestigious, mostly paywalled, scholarly journals”: Nature, Science, Cell, and PNAS. Le
finding was that more than 40% of these journals’ papers were from U.S. federally funded
recherche. This analysis agrees in the cases of Cell and PNAS (60% et 52%), but differs for
Nature and Science. In those cases, this study finds only 15% et 13% of papers, respectivement,
to be a result of federal funding over 5 années. One possible explanation is the extensive front
matter and high level of editorial content in these journals, which is included in the Dimen-
sions “Article” type, but is provided as a separate facet and thus able to be filtered out of results
in Web of Science (see also Section 5). Cependant, even if one were to take the Dimensions FF
number as the numerator (casting the widest possible net to find FF articles) and the WoS num-
ber as the denominator (narrowing to a stricter definition of Article type), the percentages only
increase modestly to 22% et 23%.

4.6. RQ6: Which Research Institutions Are Authors Who Tend to Publish FF Research Affiliated with?

Research institutions will also see effects to varying degrees from the updated OSTP memo.
This is what will likely be of most interest to individual libraries and universities—how will our
specific campus be affected by this new guidance?

Études scientifiques quantitatives

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

Chiffre 6. By journal: percentage of federally funded publications v. total number. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

The analysis in this section was filtered down to look only at research institutions in the
États-Unis (Dimensions filter: Location − Research Organization − Country/Territory =
États-Unis). Note that organizations from around the world will also be affected by the
new OSTP memo, not only those in the United States. When publishing research collabora-
tively with a researcher that receives some federal funding from the United States, the resulting

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

Tableau 4.

Journals with highest percentage of FF articles

Journal title
AIDS and Behavior

JCI Insight

The Astronomical Journal

Preventing Chronic Disease

Alcoholism Clinical & Experimental Research

Genes & Développement

Journal of Clinical Investigation

Contemporary Clinical Trials

Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment

Molecular Biology of the Cell

American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Neuropsychopharmacology

FF pubs
1,413

1,852

1,972

512

855

505

1,776

682

642

900

1,096

964

All pubs
1,850

2,545

2,815

748

1,264

751

2,688

1,037

984

1,396

1,756

1,556

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

% FF
76.38

72.77

70.05

68.45

67.64

67.24

66.07

65.77

65.24

64.47

62.41

61.95

Études scientifiques quantitatives

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Chiffre 7. By research institution: US federally funded publications v. total publications. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

research output will still qualify under the updated guidance and be made publicly available
immediately. Donc, institutions from around the world do appear in this section, but with
only a fraction of their total numbers represented.

Encore une fois, the general trend holds: As the number of publications goes up, so too does the
number of federally funded publications (Chiffre 7). Three institutions that stand out as pub-
lishing more funded research than typical are three national labs: Lawrence Berkeley, Oak
Ridge, and Argonne. It makes sense that more of their research would be a result of federal
funding as the labs themselves are the result of federal funding.

When looking by percentage, national laboratories again come to the top, as expected.
There is such tight clustering at the top that data labels quickly become overlapped and
unreadable; therefore a rectangular callout is added to Figure 8 to show the grouping of
national laboratories at high FF percentages. The first nonfederal agencies to appear are
Scripps Research at #21 and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard at
#22, both with almost exactly 73% of their total output acknowledging federal funding. Har-
vard University does appear one spot before that at #20, but with their jointly administered
Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Tableau 5 shows the top 12 institutions with high FF percentages.

4.7. RQ7: Were These FF Articles Published Open Access or Behind a Paywall?

So far, we have seen a detailed analysis of publisher, journal, and institution-level publication
motifs, looking at how many U.S. federally funded articles were published over a certain time
period out of a whole. Cependant, a question still remains: In what manner were those federally

Études scientifiques quantitatives

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

Chiffre 8. By research institution: percentage of federally funded publications v. total number. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

funded articles published? Are they published as some form of Open Access and thus already
freely available? Or were they published behind a paywall, and if they had they been published
dans 2026 or later, would have represented a need to change the access mode? Autrement dit, comment
many of these past publications would have required a shift in access to comply with the Nelson
OSTP memo guidance?

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

Tableau 5.

Research Institutions with highest percentage of FF articles

Institution
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

National High Magnetic Field Laboratory

Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory

Brookhaven National Laboratory

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

FF pubs
3,861

1,345

1,830

6,082

12,820

10,792

5,920

5,268

7,032

All US
4,411

1,555

2,164

7,232

15,367

12,978

7,132

6,457

8,771

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

13,623

17,215

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

National Center for Atmospheric Research

4,099

2,944

5,185

3,733

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

%
87.53

86.50

84.57

84.10

83.43

83.16

83.01

81.59

80.17

79.13

79.05

78.86

Études scientifiques quantitatives

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

Open Access mode is provided to Dimensions by Unpaywall, an open database of free
scholarly article metadata. Unpaywall determines the best OA location of a publication based
on a cascading algorithm. It “prioritizes publisher-hosted content first (Hybrid or Gold), alors
prioritizes versions closer to the version of record (PublishedVersion over AcceptedVersion),
then more authoritative repositories” (Unpaywall, 2020). Donc, even though a publication
may match multiple OA codes, each publication receives only one OA status in Dimensions.
Dimensions also supplements Unpaywall’s data with a list of full OA journals for the case of
Gold Open Access (Digital Science, 2021).

An important nuance to keep in mind when looking at Open Access status is that Unpay-
wall provides the current status of an article as it appears when a report is run (in this case, comme
of October 2022). There is a lack of historic OA data, so it is not possible to track the OA status
at the time a publication appeared, or to find when an article qualified for a certain OA status.
Donc, it is possible an article appearing in this analysis as a certain OA mode only earned
that status recently and would have returned a different result if the analysis were run earlier.

Chiffre 9(un) displays the breakdown of each year’s federally funded output, showing the
percentage of FF articles published under each of five types of Open Access status. For com-
parison, Chiffre 9(b) shows the same plot, but for all publications worldwide from 2017–2021,
roughly 5.6 million per year.

Research outputs that were published Closed access, or behind a paywall, appear at the
bottom of each year’s stack in gray. These are the publications that would have been affected
the most by the new OSTP memo. Approximately 26% of each year’s FF papers were pub-
lished Closed access over 2017–2020, mais 2021 saw an increase to nearly 32%, likely due to
the 12-month embargo that is currently allowed by OSTP policy. Over time, the gray Closed
access bar may return to a level more consistent with past years.

Green OA publications are self-archived by the author or a colleague by depositing the
paper into a freely available university repository, disciplinary server, or a personal webpage
at no charge. This is the only OA route not delivered by the publisher, and the document may

Chiffre 9. Open Access status of publications by year, 2017–2021.

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

not exactly match the final version, depending on publisher and journal restrictions. Green OA
has seen its share decrease over these years, from being the most common mode in 2017 à
the third most common by 2021. This may again be an artifact of the currently allowed
12-month embargo period in the 2013 OSTP memo. Authors may publish their work behind
a paywall and make it publicly available through a Green OA route after 12 mois. Intérêt-
franchement, compliance with the new OSTP memo could increase participation in Green OA, so this
mode of access may dramatically increase once the guidance takes effect by 2026.

Gold OA refers to the final version of an article published in a fully OA journal that offers all
articles immediately, permanently, and freely available on the journal website. This may or
may not be the result of paying an article processing charge (APC). Gold OA in federally
funded publications has increased over the time period studied here, becoming the second
most common mode of access in this data set, at around 27% dans 2021.

Bronze OA is free access that is made temporarily available by the publisher, which can
grant and remove access at any time without warning. It has seen the percentage of FF pub-
lications decrease over time.

Enfin, Hybrid OA articles are published within a subscription (toll-based) journal, mais
made freely available on an individual, case-by-case basis by “unlocking” the article through
paying an article processing charge (APC) to the publisher or journal. Hybrid contributes the
smallest amount to the FF OA modes studied here, autour 8%.

In terms of all publications, Chiffre 9(b) shows a dramatic decrease in the number of Closed
publications, with Gold increasing and taking a larger share each year. Green remains rela-
tively small at around 5%, while Bronze and Hybrid make up 7% et 9% yearly, respectivement.

Papers that acknowledge U.S. federal funding are already much less likely to be published
Closed access and much more likely to be deposited Green OA than a typical paper. Le
impact of the OSTP memo will likely accelerate this, as depositing Green is one way to
achieve zero-embargo availability. Hybrid, Bronze, and Gold OA modes are roughly equiva-
lent between US federally funded and nonfederally funded publications.

4.7.1. Open Access by publisher

Once OA status is introduced, we can combine some of the earlier aspects for further inves-
tigation. Chiffre 10 shows a stacked bar chart of the Open Access status of FF publications by
publisher. This shows the publishers with the 16 largest amounts of FF publications in terms of
absolute number.

Elsevier, Springer-Nature, and Wiley are all large publishers with around 30% of FF
research published as Closed access. IEEE and ACS have much higher percentages published
as Closed, at around 50–60%. These publishers may be more vulnerable to the change in pol-
icy by making their previously paywalled content publicly and openly available. Pure Gold
publishers appear strikingly as nearly 100% yellow, such as MDPI, Frontiers, and PLOS. Wol-
ters Kluwer shows the highest amount of Green OA in this set of 16 publishers, at nearly 50%.

This data could be presented in many other ways. Chiffre 10 shows the top 16 publishers by
number of FF publications, but it may also be interesting to sort by highest percentage of
Closed access or most Green OA. A companion website is available at https://ostp.lib
.iastate.edu/, which expands the data presented in Figures 10 et 11 to show the top 32
instead of only the top 16. En outre, the user is able to change the sorting method. Choices
include highest total number of FF publications or highest percentage of any of the OA status
(Closed, Vert, Gold, Bronze, or Hybrid).

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

Chiffre 10. Open Access status of FF Publications by publisher, 2017–2021. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

4.7.2. Open Access by journal title

Moving to the OA status of individual journal titles, we can again see certain journals have the
potential to be affected more heavily than others. Chiffre 11 shows the top 16 journal titles by
absolute number of FF publications over the 5 years studied. The top three journal titles are
tous 100% Gold OA: Rapports scientifiques, PLOS ONE, and Nature Communications. eLife also

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Chiffre 11. Open Access status of FF publications by journal title, 2017–2021. Interactive version at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/.

Études scientifiques quantitatives

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

appears as completely Gold, at number 13. Presumably, these journals could continue oper-
ating as they are today even after the new OSTP policy framework takes effect in 2026. C'est
possible there is already some portion of FF output in these journals that is deposited Green
OA. Unpaywall’s algorithm prefers publisher-provided Open Access over repository provided
OA, so the presence of Green OA within these journals would require a deeper analysis
beyond what Unpaywall reports as the “best OA status.”

Inversement, the FASEB Journal, Journal of the ACS, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, et
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces all publish a substantial proportion of their total federally
funded output behind a paywall. These journals will need to adjust their policies and strategy
to comply with the coming guidance of making FF publications immediately and publicly
available.

Similar to publisher OA data, the companion website also allows a user to sort journal title
OA data by highest total number of FF publications, or the highest percentage of any OA mode.

5. LIMITATIONS

The clearest limitation of this analysis is the likelihood that not all U.S. federally funded research
is included in the data set. We are limited by the fact that we only know about publications
that identify funding sources, and there is a possibility that some were missed. Par exemple,
the NSF’s Polar Environment, Safety and Health Section (PESH) is a valid granting agency, mais
it returns no results when directly searched for in Dimensions. PESH is included in the list of
agencies that make up the custom filter but it has no effect on the number of publications
analyzed here.

As noted in Section 3, the availability of funding information from Crossref varies widely by
publisher. This becomes the starting point for Dimensions, which then enriches the informa-
tion with full text analysis and agreements with publishers to obtain additional funding infor-
mation. Even when it is included, not all publications correctly name the funder or provide a
funder ID. The new OSTP memo addresses this in section 4.a: “Agencies should … collect and
make publicly available appropriate metadata associated with scholarly publications and data
resulting from federally funded research. … Such metadata should include at minimum: tous
author and co-author names, affiliations, and sources of funding, referencing digital persistent
identifiers, as appropriate” (Nelson, 2022).

Authors will need to accurately and appropriately report their funding information, pub-
lishers need to supply that information to Crossref when registering for a DOI, and biblio-
graphic databases must ingest that information. Enriching and enhancing funding information
by analyzing the text of the acknowledgments section is also helpful, but could be improved.

It is also possible that some federal funding agencies were not explicitly included in the
custom-made filter. Three rounds of refinement captured 239 individual funding agencies.
One could always go further, but at some point, there are diminishing returns to continuing
to export funders, manually assess them one by one, and add them to the custom Dimensions
filter. A researcher with more in-depth knowledge of U.S. federal grant funding agencies and
their subdivisions, institutes, and centers could investigate the custom filter that was defined
and used here to identify holes or gaps.

The document type Article in Dimensions covers many types of content in journals, y compris
editorials, letters, corrections, book reviews, news items, etc.. (Digital Science, 2019). These
materials were unable to be separated from the main Article type and were therefore included
in this analysis.

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

6. CONCLUSION
The practical implications of the August 2022 OSTP memo’s guidance are still being defined.
Making federally funded publications immediately publicly available will involve a shift in
strategy and behavior for publishers, authors, institutions, and readers. These peer-reviewed
publications becoming immediately accessible to the public will expand the level of impact
and reach, but it may also bring with it some ramifications that may not yet not be completely
understood.

Though the OSTP released a companion impact report, it did not investigate the potential
effects beyond a general estimation of the number of articles affected per year. This analysis
went further but is only a first step in attempting to understand the broad-reaching implications
of this updated policy. Quantifying the number, nature, and characteristics of publications
from the past that would have qualified under this policy framework helps to clarify some
questions and provide guidance still outstanding. It is clear that publishers, journaux, et
research institutions will all be affected, with some needing to adjust more than others. Once
the new OSTP guidance takes effect, the equivalent of Figures 9(un), 10, et 11 will all become
completely Green, Gold, or Hybrid.

Reported funder information is critical and will remain important as the OSTP guidance
takes effect in 2026. Publishers, funders, and authors need to submit complete, accurate,
and structured funding information, and database providers should continue to extract addi-
tional information to enhance this metadata. Dimensions and other bibliographic metadata
tools will continue to define and refine funder filters to enable users to conduct a similar anal-
ysis to this on their own institution’s publications.

REMERCIEMENTS

This paper was written using data obtained on October 18, 2022 from the paid version of
Digital Science’s Dimensions platform (Digital Science, 2018), available at https://app
.dimensions.ai. Plots were created using Plotly version 5.10.0 (Plotly, 2022). The Dimensions
Support Team was also very helpful in answering questions related to the construction of
custom groups and providing further details on the data.

COMPETING INTERESTS

The author has no competing interests.

INFORMATIONS SUR LE FINANCEMENT

No funding was received for this research.

DATA AVAILABILITY

The data resulting from this research are made freely available in .csv format (Schares, 2022un).

(cid:129) Data set of funders
(cid:129) Data set of publishers
(cid:129) Data set of journal titles
(cid:129) Data set of research organizations
(cid:129) Data set of Open Access status by FF and worldwide

A companion website is also available at https://ostp.lib.iastate.edu/ which includes inter-
active versions of each plot shown in this paper. Users may pan, zoom, and hover over data

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

points for more information. En plus, they may search for a specific publisher, journal
title, or research institution to enable its data label and color it red for easier identification
on the graph. The source code for the website is freely available (Schares, 2022b).

RÉFÉRENCES

American Anthropological Association. (2022). AAA’s response to
OSTP public accessibility memo. https://www.americananthro
.org/StayInformed/ NewsDetail.aspx?ItemNumber=28478.
Accessed November 22, 2022.

Anderson, R.. (2022). A new OSTP memo: Some initial observations
and questions. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/08/29/a
-new-ostp-memo-some-initial-observations-and-questions/.
Accessed October 14, 2022.

Association of American Publishers. (2022). Statement from Shelley
Husband, Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, AAP, sur
decision by the White House Office of Science and Technology
policy to make private sector publications freely available. https://
publishers.org/news/statement-from-shelley-husband-senior-vice
-president-government-affairs-association-of-american-publishers
-on-decision-by-white-house-office-of-science-and-technology
-policy-to-make-private-se/. Accessed October 14, 2022.

Association of American Universities. (2022). AAU statement
on OSTP decision to make federally funded research publicly
available. https://www.aau.edu/newsroom/press-releases/aau
-statement-ostp-decision-make-federally-funded-research
-publicly. Accessed November 22, 2022.

Association of Research Libraries. (2022un). ARL celebrates
Biden-Harris administration’s historic policy to make federally
funded research immediately available. https://www.arl.org
/news/arl-celebrates-biden-harris-administrations-historic-policy
-to-make-federally-funded-research-immediately-available/.
Accessed October 14, 2022.

Association of Research Libraries. (2022b). Two-page table com-
pares 2013 et 2022 public-access guidance from US Office
of Science and Technology Policy. https://www.arl.org/news
/two-page-table-compares-2013-and-2022-public-access
-guidance-from-us-office-of-science-and-technology-policy/.
Accessed December 9, 2022.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2020). Australian and New Zealand
Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC). https://www.abs.gov
.au/statistics/classifications/australian-and-new-zealand-standard
-research-classification-anzsrc/latest-release. Accessed October
14, 2022.

Clarivate. (2021). Web of Science platform: Web de la Science: Résumé
of coverage. https://web.archive.org/web/20211214092845/
https://clarivate.libguides.com/webofscienceplatform/coverage.
Accessed October 14, 2022.

Clarke & Esposito. (2022). Zero embargo. https://www.ce-strategy

.com/the-brief/zero-embargo/. Accessed October 14, 2022.

Digital Science. (2018). Dimensions [software]. Available from

https://app.dimensions.ai. Accessed October 18, 2022.

Digital Science. (2019). What exactly is covered in the “Publica-
tions” in Dimensions? https://dimensions.freshdesk.com/support
/solutions/articles/23000018859-what-exactly-is-covered-in-the
-publications-in-dimensions-. Accessed December 12, 2022.
Digital Science. (2021). Where does the definition of “Open
Access” come from in Dimensions? What does it include?
https://dimensions.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles
/23000018863-where-does-the-definition-of-open-access-come
-from-in-dimensions-what-does-it-include-. Accessed December
9, 2022.

European Science Foundation. (2022). cOAlition S welcomes the
updated Open Access policy guidance from the White House
Office of Science Technology and Policy. https://www.coalition
-s.org/coalition-s-welcomes-the-updated-open-access-policy
-guidance-from-the-white-house-office-of-science-technology
-and-policy/. Accessed October 14, 2022.

Gibson, D., van Honk, J., & Calero-Medina, C. (2022). Acknowl-
edging the difficulties: A case study of a funding text. https://
www.leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/acknowledging-the-difficulties-a
-case-study-of-a-funding-text. Accessed December 7, 2022.
Herzog, C., Hook, D., & Konkiel, S. (2020). Dimensions: Bringing
down barriers between scientometricians and data. Quantitative
Science Studies, 1(1), 387–395. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00020
Holdren, J.. (2013). Increasing access to the results of federally
funded scientific research. https://obamawhitehouse.archives
.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ostp_public_access_memo
_2013.pdf. Accessed October 14, 2022.

IOP Publishing. (2022). IOP Publishing’s response to the OSTP
memorandum on ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access
to federally funded research. https://ioppublishing.org/news/iop
-publishings-response-to-the-ostp-memorandum-on-ensuring
-free-immediate-and-equitable-access-to-federally-funded
-research/. Accessed November 22, 2022.

Johnson, E. B., & Lucas, F. (2022). Letter to OSTP Director Dr. Arati
Prabhakar. House Committee on Science, Espace, and Technology.
https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/ostp_letter_research
_access.pdf

Kramer, B., & de Jonge, H. (2022). The availability and complete-
ness of open funder metadata: Case study for publications funded
by the Dutch Research Council. Études scientifiques quantitatives, 3(3),
583–599. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00210

Marcum, C. S., & Donohue, R.. (2022). Breakthroughs for all: Deliv-
ering equitable access to America’s research. https://www
.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/breakthroughs
-for-alldelivering-equitable-access-to-americas-research/.
Accessed October 7, 2022.

Moore, S. UN. (2022). Thoughts on the new White House OSTP open
access memo. https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p
=3271. Accessed October 14, 2022.

National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES). (2022).
Federal Funds for Research and Development: Fiscal Years 2020–21.
Number NSF 22-323, Tableau 15. National Science Foundation,
Alexandria, VA. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsf22323/.
Nelson, UN. (2022). Ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to
federally funded research. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp
-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo
.pdf. Accessed October 7, 2022.

Office of Science and Technology Policy. (2022). Economic land-
scape of federal public access policy. Technical report, Blanc
House Office of Science and Technology Policy. https://www
.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP
-Public-Access-Congressional-Report.pdf.

Patel, V. (2022). White House pushes journals to drop paywalls on
publicly funded research. New York Times, Août 25. https://
www.nytimes.com/2022/08/25/us/white-house-federally-funded
-research-access.html

Études scientifiques quantitatives

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d

F
/

4
1
1
2
0
7
8
4
4
9
q
s
s
_
un
_
0
0
2
3
7
p
d

b
oui
g
toi
e
s
t

o
n
0
7
S
e
p
e
m
b
e
r
2
0
2
3

Impact of the 2022 OSTP memo

Peer Community In. (2022). Free peer review & validation of
preprints of articles. https://peercommunityin.org/. Accessed
Novembre 28, 2022.

Petrou, C. (2022). Guest post – quantifying the impact of the OSTP
politique. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/09/13/guest-post
-quantifying-the-impact-of-the-ostp-policy/. Accessed December
9, 2022.

PLOS. (2022). PLOS cheers the OSTP memorandum “Ensuring free,
immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research”.
https://theplosblog.plos.org/2022/09/plos-cheers-the-ostp
-memorandum/. Accessed November 22, 2022.

Plotly. (2022). Plotly open source graphing library for Python
[software]. Available from https://plotly.com/python/. Accessed
Octobre 25, 2022.

Pollock, D., & Michael, UN. (2022). News & views: OSTP memo –
Modeling market impact. https://deltathink.com/news-views-ostp
-memo-modeling-market-impact/. Accessed October 25, 2022.
PREreview. (2022). A site for crowdsourcing preprint reviews.

https://prereview.org/. Accessed November 28, 2022.

Priem, J., Piwowar, H., & Orr, R.. (2022). OpenAlex: A fully-open
index of scholarly works, authors, venues, institutions, and con-
cepts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.01833

Review Commons. (2022). The preprint peer-review platform.
https://www.reviewcommons.org/. Accessed November 28,
2022.

Schares, E. (2022un). OSTP impact. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo

.7254815. Accessed December 9, 2022.

Schares, E. (2022b). OSTP impact. GitHub repository. https://github

.com/eschares/OSTP_impact

SPARC. (2022). Taxpayers to get immediate access to publicly
funded research. https://sparcopen.org/news/2022/taxpayers-to
-get-immediate-access-to-publicly-funded-research/. Accessed
Octobre 14, 2022.

Tananbaum, G. (2022). Open research funders group applauds
bold OSTP action. https://www.orfg.org/news/2022/8/29/open
-research-funders-group-applauds-bold-ostp-action/. Accessed
Décembre 9, 2022.

Unpaywall. (2020). Data format, DOI object. https://unpaywall.org

/data-format#doi-object. Accessed October 19, 2022.

Van Eck, N. J., & Waltman, L. (2021). Crossref as a source of open
bibliographic metadata. In Proceedings of the 18th International
Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and
Informetrics (ISSI) (pp. 1169–1174). https://www.issi-society.org
/proceedings/issi_2021/Proceedings%20ISSI%202021.pdf#page
=1201

White House Press Release. (2022). OSTP issues guidance to make
federally funded research freely available without delay. https://
www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues
-guidance-to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available
-without-delay/. Accessed October 24, 2022.

D
o
w
n
o
un
d
e
d

F
r
o
m
h

t
t

:
/
/

d
je
r
e
c
t
.

je
t
.

e
d
toi
q
s
s
/
un
r
t
je
c
e
–
p
d