FAQs

DOE PAGES leverages the long-established DOE Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) infrastructure and systems for collecting, preserving, and disseminating scientific and technical information (R&D outputs) to collect accepted manuscripts. DOE-funded researchers must submit the full-text accepted manuscript or open access article along with the associated metadata to OSTI.

Researchers at a national lab or other major DOE facility who have a manuscript accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal should use their lab's routine processes for scientific and technical information (STI) submission. Metadata/citation information for the journal article should be provided, as well as either an upload of the full-text accepted manuscript or open access article. For more detailed instructions, please contact your lab or facility STI point of contact.

DOE financial assistance recipients are to submit accepted manuscripts or the open access article and associated metadata using E-Link once the manuscript is accepted for publication and the peer review process has been completed. Accepted manuscripts can easily be submitted to E-Link via a submission interface in a simple step-by-step format. If authors have the DOI (digital object identifier) for the journal article, much of the metadata can be populated automatically. For more detailed instructions, researchers can refer to the DOE F 4600.2 in the terms and conditions of the award or to the E-Link instructions.

On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a memorandum entitled "Increasing Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research." It directed Federal agencies with more than $100 million in research and development (R&D) expenditures to develop plans to make the published results of federally funded research freely available to the public within one year of publication, and it required researchers to better account for and manage the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research. DOE's response in its 2014 Public Access Plan built upon its long tradition of STI management and its established Scientific and Technical Information Program (STIP) infrastructure, which ensures long-term access and preservation of various forms of STI resulting from DOE-funded work.

The Plan was updated in June 2023 in support of the August 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo to federal agencies - Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research. For information about the 2023 DOE Public Access Plan, please see FAQ "What is the 2023 DOE Public Access Plan?"

Publications emanating from DOE-funding published on or after October 1, 2024, will fall under the 2023 DOE Public Access Plan requirements. For more information about publications requirements, please see FAQ "How does DOE implement the Plan's requirements for providing access to journal articles authored by DOE-funded researchers?".

DOE-funded researchers (authors), e.g., DOE federal employees, financial assistance recipients, or contractors (including laboratories), are required to submit the full-text accepted manuscript of a journal article and associated metadata to OSTI using E-Link or through labs' publication management systems no later than the publication date of the article. If the article itself is published as "open access" (OA), the author may submit the OA article and metadata to DOE. DOE provides immediate, free public access to submitted publications through its designated repository DOE PAGES.

Reasonable publication fees are allowable costs of an award or contract and can be included in proposed budget requests.

Following the issuance of the 2013 OSTP Public Access Memo, the publishing community developed a multi-publisher stakeholder organization, the Clearinghouse for Open Research of the United States (CHORUS), to provide access to metadata for journal articles resulting from government funding. As a complement to author submissions of accepted manuscripts, DOE PAGES also links to participating publisher-supplied journal articles via CHORUS-supplied metadata.

DOE collects, assigns, and/or includes, and makes publicly available metadata and associated PIDs for publications resulting from DOE funding. This includes PIDs associated with authors, sources of funding, organizations, and research results. DOE has developed policies and guidance for federal employees, contractors, and financial recipients around using persistent identifiers. See DOE PID Policies for more information about specific policies and requirements.

"Public Access" comprises the efforts of U.S. federal science agencies to increase access to unclassified scholarly publications and digital data resulting from federal research and development (R&D) funding. While OSTI has provided public access to DOE's unclassified R&D results throughout its history, the incremental change reflected in the DOE Public Access Plan is the addition of final accepted manuscripts/journal articles, which OSTI makes publicly available. Access is provided through both DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV.

While there are various forms of "Open Access", this FAQ defines Open Access as online research outputs that are free of all restrictions on access and free of many restrictions on use (see Wikipedia's Open Access Description). Within the topic of Open Access, there are different models such as green and gold OA. Green OA involves author deposit of accepted manuscripts into institutional or subject repositories, while gold OA typically means the author pays a fee to the publisher to enable open access. While most federal research funding allows for the payment of gold OA fees, DOE's implementation of public access is based on the green OA model, where authors deposit accepted manuscripts to OSTI, which are then publicly available through DOE PAGES. For questions about OA articles, please email pagescomments@osti.gov.

Not necessarily. In accordance with DOE's Public Access Plan, any researcher with DOE funding is required to submit metadata and the full-text of the accepted manuscript to OSTI (or open access article). An external public access compliance dashboard might count an article as compliant if it is publicly available through any source, such as a publisher's website or other institutional repository. Though the article may currently be available, these entities are not under any mandate or obligation to ensure long-term, permanent access and preservation.

Furthermore, there is a difference between DOE's Public Access Plan and Open Access (OA). For a definition of Open Access, please see FAQ "What's the difference between DOE's Public Access Plan and Open Access (OA)?" To fulfill DOE's public access requirements, any researcher with DOE funding (including researchers at national labs and DOE grantees) must submit the metadata and the full-text of the accepted manuscript to OSTI.

All researchers receiving DOE funding are required to submit metadata and the full-text accepted manuscript (or open access article) to OSTI. A list of metadata requirements and instructions for submitting accepted manuscripts can be found here.

Discovery of and access to DOE-funded research results is managed by the DOE OSTI, which offers several ways for the public to search for scientific and technical information (R&D outputs) via freely available search tools. Scholarly publications are made available in the DOE PAGES. OSTI.GOV is the primary search to for finding all publicly available DOE-funded R&D outputs, including scholarly publications, technical reports, patents, data, software, conference papers, and more.

An accepted manuscript is defined as the version of the article that has been accepted for publication and includes all changes made during the peer-review process, which is also called the final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript or the author accepted manuscript. It includes the same content as the published version but is not the final published version or a reproduction of what appears in the journal; i.e., it is not a "reprint" or a downloaded PDF of the published article. It does not include the publisher's copyediting, stylistic edits, or formatting changes that will constitute the final "version of record" that appears in a scholarly journal. Accepted manuscripts are submitted to OSTI by the researcher or the researcher's institution. More information about submitting an accepted manuscript can be found here.

A published article, or version of record (VoR), is the final published article, including copyediting, stylistic edits, and formatting changes per a specific journal publisher. It is considered the VoR because of potential post-publication updates such as errata, retractions, or other changes.

For peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts, DOE's reserved government license allows DOE to distribute copies of accepted manuscripts to the public. DOE's government license is reserved ab initio by the terms and conditions of the relevant contract or agreement and takes precedence over a subsequent transfer of copyright by the DOE contractor or financial assistance recipient. Therefore, DOE-funded authors will not be in violation of any copyright by submitting such accepted manuscripts and metadata to OSTI. However, publishers' copyright transfer agreements and journal publication agreements may include language about withholding any distribution of the manuscript for a period of time (e.g., a 12-month embargo period). To avoid any misunderstanding, contractors and financial assistance recipients who sign such agreements should ensure the agreements do not include an embargo period; however, as stated above, the government license takes precedence over any subsequent transfer of copyright.

Copyright transfer is a standard requirement by publishers that an author submitting a manuscript for publication complete a Copyright Transfer Agreement prior to the manuscript's acceptance. The wording on the forms may vary from publisher to publisher, but basic wording includes transfer of copyright to the publisher. A key point to note is that, regardless of the specific wording, the Government retains certain rights to the manuscript.

In fact, within the prime contract for DOE National Laboratories there is wording which states: "... (2) The contractor shall mark each scientific or technical article first produced or composed under this Contract and submitted for journal publication or similar means of dissemination with a notice, similar in all material respects to the following, on the front reflecting the Government's non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license in the copyright.

Notice: This manuscript has been authored by [insert the name of the Contractor] under Contract No. [insert the contract number] with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. (End of Notice) [Ref. DEAR970.5227-2 Rights in data-technology transfer]"

Copyrighted, accepted manuscripts made publicly available from DOE may be used and re-used in accordance with U.S. copyright law. A person who obtains a copyrighted, accepted manuscript from DOE may read, download, and analyze the manuscript and may utilize the manuscript in accordance with recognized legal constructs.

Providing attribution to the author(s) of copyrighted works is fairly common. Often, the terms and conditions of a copyright license or assignment requires attribution. DOE will leverage public access efforts to maximize the potential for creative reuse of DOE-funded R&D, avoid unnecessary duplication of existing mechanisms, and maximize the impact of DOE research investments.

All researchers receiving DOE funding are required to submit the full-text accepted manuscript (or open access article) and associated metadata to OSTI. A list of metadata requirements and instructions for submitting accepted manuscripts can be found here.

DOE PAGES search results will provide access to accepted manuscripts or published articles. Most typically, access is provided to accepted manuscripts.

The accepted manuscript is defined as the version of the article that has been accepted for publication and includes all changes made during the peer-review process, which is also called the final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript. It includes the same content as the published version but is not the final published version or a reproduction of what appears in the journal; i.e., it is not a "reprint" or a downloaded PDF of the published article. It does not include the publisher's copyediting, stylistic or formatting edits that will constitute the final "version of record" that appears in a scholarly journal. Accepted manuscripts are submitted to OSTI by the researcher or the researcher's institution. More information about submitting an accepted manuscript can be found here.

The key criteria for submission of accepted manuscripts to OSTI are (1) that DOE partially or completely funded the research reflected in the article or accepted manuscript and (2) that the publication has been accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In some cases, DOE PAGES will also link to a publisher's accepted manuscript through OSTI's collaboration with the publisher consortium CHORUS. For more information about CHORUS, please see FAQ "What is CHORUS? What is its relationship to DOE PAGES?"

A published article, or version of record (VoR), is the final published article, including copyediting, stylistic edits, and formatting changes per a specific journal publisher. It is considered the VoR because of potential post-publication updates such as errata, retractions, or other changes.

Access to DOE-funded research results is managed by the DOE OSTI. OSTI offers several ways for the public to search for and discover scientific and technical information (R&D outputs) via freely available search tools. DOE PAGES contains scholarly publications exclusively. OSTI.GOV provides access to many R&D resource types such as journal articles/accepted manuscripts, technical reports, data, software, patents, conference papers, and more. Scholarly publication information is also available through the DOE PAGES API and OSTI.GOV API.

Although much of the material in DOE PAGES is subject to copyright protection under U.S. law, the Federal Government retains a license in copyrighted works first produced under a federal contract or grant. Accordingly, DOE PAGES users may read, download, and analyze the available material by virtue of the Federal Government's reserved rights. If DOE PAGES users wish to do more than read, download, and analyze available material, they should contact the respective authors or publishers for permission.

OSTI employs an Acceptable Use Policy to help safeguard and enhance the use of publicly accessible information by prohibiting excessive content requests or activities. Exemptions may be granted to individuals or organizations on a case-by-case basis. Email pagescomments@osti.gov with any questions.

Full-text versions of accepted manuscripts and journal articles will be made available with no delay or embargo if published on or after 10/1/24.

Prior to 10/1/24, DOE implemented an embargo, or "administrative interval", providing access within 12 months from the date of publication for journal articles. Individual journals may institute shorter embargo periods, and DOE PAGES will provide free access earlier than 12 months in those cases. Only bibliographic information and related metadata for publications are accessible until the embargo has passed, at which time full-text links and access is enabled. During the embargo, citations will include a notation indicating when the full text will be publicly available.

A researcher at a national lab or other major DOE facility who has a manuscript accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal should use their lab's routine processes for scientific and technical information (STI) submission. They should provide the full-text accepted manuscript (or open access article) and the associated metadata. For more detailed instructions, please contact the lab or facility STI point of contact.

DOE financial assistance recipients submit their final peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts (or open access article) and associated metadata through E-Link. Accepted manuscripts should be submitted once they are accepted for publication and the peer review process has been completed.

To submit an accepted manuscript, grantees should use the "Financial Assistance Recipients" tab from the E-Link webpage. Authors will then use a simple step-by-step submission interface to make the submission. Through E-Link, authors submit metadata/citation information for the journal article as well as the full-text accepted manuscript (or open access article). If authors have the DOI (digital object identifier) for the journal article, much of the metadata can be populated automatically. Instructions for submitting are outlined under the "Scientific and Technical Reporting" section of the DOE Federal Reporting Checklist and Instructions, DOE F 4600.2 (see Journal Article-Accepted Manuscripts). Detailed instructions can also be found on E-Link.

The Department of Energy Energy Link system (E-Link), developed and maintained by (OSTI), is used for submitting scientific and technical information (STI) or R&D outputs, including journal article accepted manuscripts, technical reports, conference proceedings, scientific software, and other types of STI. E-Link facilitates the electronic submittal of STI to DOE by communities that include authors, researchers, reviewers, research administrators, and others doing business with DOE.

Once journal article accepted manuscripts are submitted to E-Link, the record will then be processed appropriately and become visible and searchable in both DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV. OSTI.GOV is DOE's primary search tool for DOE-funded scientific and technical information including journal articles/accepted manuscripts and related metadata, technical reports, scientific research datasets and collections, scientific software, patents, conference and workshop papers, books and theses, and multimedia.

Accepted manuscripts should be submitted as a PDF (portable document format), Microsoft Word Document (.doc, .docx), or OpenOffice/OpenDocument (.odf). If submitting a PDF, ensure that it is not encrypted, password protected, or corrupted.

It is preferred that the PDF is compliant with one of four standards and with extractable text. The standards are PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-3a, or PDF/UA. For more information, please see "Best Practices for Portable Document Format (PDF) Creation". PDFs submitted to OSTI that are not compliant with one of the four standards or do not have extractable text will take at least one additional business day to process. The PDF/A and PDF/UA publications are an excellent source on the standards.

It is recommended that a 508-compliant version be submitted because Federal agencies are required to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. This applies to web applications, web pages and associated files. DOE PAGES strives to ensure all pages on the site are accessible to the greatest possible number of people and Assistive Technology devices. The following links can help you develop pages that comply with accessibility laws and guidelines:

Duplicate submissions are not a concern. When you (or another author) submit your final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript and provide the digital object identifier (DOI), OSTI reconciles the submission with any other submissions that have the same DOI. OSTI accounts for the award number and sponsoring office identified in the submission and merges the information as part of the metadata for the accepted manuscript record displayed in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV.

You still need to provide metadata and the accepted manuscript (or open access article) to E-Link. You can enter the metadata using the auto-populate feature by entering the DOI for the article (E-Link will pull the metadata from Crossref) along with your DOE contract number. Then upload the full text.

Yes, you still need to submit the accepted manuscript to OSTI. While product information related to final peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts is typically reported as part of annual progress reporting, or the Research Performance Progress Report (RPPR), for the award, the full-text of the accepted manuscript is not required for these purposes. Therefore, the full-text of the manuscript and metadata associated with it needs to be submitted to E-Link for public access purposes. The recipient institution of the award is responsible for ensuring the accepted manuscript is submitted to E-Link. This can be done by the principal investigator on the award, staff in the sponsoring research office, other researchers, or students.

The recipient institution of the award is responsible for ensuring the submission of final peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts for public access, but the manuscript may be submitted by the principal investigator on the award, staff in the sponsoring research office, other researchers, or students.

At this time, only accepted manuscripts are required to be provided to OSTI. But, if there is a separate document associated with the accepted manuscript that includes supplemental information, it is recommended that the unformatted supplemental information be combined with the accepted manuscript and provided to OSTI.

It is recognized that some publishers require supplemental information such as data sets when an article is accepted for publication. Separate publicly available datasets are another form of STI which may be submitted to OSTI. Only metadata/citation information is submitted to OSTI, while the dataset(s) is hosted in a repository or by the research organization. The data can be linked to the accepted manuscript by using the related identifier metadata field during submission.

An article processing charge (APC), also known as a publication fee, is a fee that is sometimes charged to authors in order to publish an article in an open access academic journal (see Wikipedia's APC description). These may also be known as "publication costs." DOE-funded authors are free to publish in journals of their choice, including open access journals, as authorized by their respective sites.

It is important for DOE-funded authors to know that it is not necessary to pay "author pays" fees or article processing charges solely to enable public access to their publications. DOE implements public access through its reserved license to the accepted manuscript and author submission to DOE, not through "author pays" models. Authors may choose to publish with an Open Access journal and pay a fee to do so; however, this is not necessary to comply with DOE's public access guidance, and it must be in compliance with allowable costs under the terms of their lab's/site's contract or financial assistance award with DOE.

The Publishers' versions of copyrighted manuscripts (the final published version) should not be submitted to OSTI. Only final peer-reviewed accepted manuscripts or an open access version should be submitted. DOE has the rights to use the final peer-reviewed accepted manuscript for public access purposes. Please see FAQ "What is copyright transfer?" for more information.

DOE PAGES search works much like a basic Google search, where you enter your terms into the basic search box to retrieve results. You can search for a single term or a phrase by putting it in "double quotes." Additionally, DOE PAGES supports Boolean and proximity operators, wildcards, and parentheses for grouping.

The advanced search allows you to perform more complex searches, offering searching of specific metadata fields, such as Title, Author, Article Type, or Publication Date to help you refine your search results.

To access the advanced search, select the green drop-down arrow inside the basic search box, either on the homepage or at the top of any subsequent page. To access all the advanced search features, click on the "More Options" selection at the bottom of the advanced search.

You may use the basic search box to search by an author's full name (using quotations for phrase searching), author last name, or ORCID iD. Additionally, there is a field on the advanced search screen that allows you to search by name or ORCID iD in combination with any other advanced search field.

The information on the record page is bibliographic metadata/information describing that document. Basic bibliographic information includes the title, author(s), publication date, and journal name. This metadata improves online search and retrieval of the document and helps ensure long-term preservation. Below is a list of the metadata that OSTI collects and that is displayed in DOE PAGES, with those that can be searched using the advanced search fields indicated with an asterisk (*):

DOE PAGES provides links to related research outputs such as journal articles and datasets in these sections found on the article record page.

The "References" and "Cited By" sections include reference and citation information, if available, from Crossref, Scholix, and USPTO.

The "Linked Research" section provides linked research resources. The related works are organized and can be filtered by resource type (journal article, dataset, figure, patent, etc.). The precise relationship type between the original record and the related work, such as "Is Supplement To" or "Documents", is also provided for additional context. The related works are accessible to users via digital object identifiers (DOIs).

The "Similar Records" section provides a list of similar records you might be interested in that are available in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV.

In the center of the record, near the full-text link, some records may have linked text that reads "Other Versions." If a record is submitted to OSTI indicating that there is another version, OSTI provides the link to the other record for you to easily access.

OSTI employs open-source software to extract relevant figure and table images from many of its accepted manuscripts. If a record has any images extracted from the full text document, they appear on publication record page. These can be accessed by clicking on the "Figures/Tables" section or scrolling down the record to access all the figures and tables from the publication. You can search within the images and a sort by title or date. When you select an image, it opens a larger version in the center of the screen, showing the title and description, as well as a button for download of the full-size image. You can also use the left and right arrows to scroll back and forth through the images for that record.

Full Text Available: Is a filter that includes records for which DOE PAGES provides access to the full text, either the accepted manuscript or published article. For more information on this, see FAQ "Can I limit my results to what is publicly accessible?"

Citation Only: Is a filter that includes records in DOE PAGES that are not yet publicly accessible because of embargo or administrative delay. For more information on this, see FAQ "What does "administrative interval" mean? How can I access an article still under the "administrative interval"?"

Yes, the accepted manuscripts and journal articles have been indexed to enable full-text searching. You can also search using bibliographic information including author, title, identifying numbers, and publication dates.

A DOE PAGES account allows you to save searches, set up alerts, and create and export lists in multiple formats including CSV and XML. Account registration is not necessary, but it enables more interactive features and customization.

While logged on with an approved account, members of the DOE community (DOE Federal employee, contractor, or grantee) can view additional citation metrics on the record page, including impact factor, citation impact by journal and by field, and the percentage rank by field for that year. Users can also view a list of all resources referenced by or citing the article using the References and Cited By sections of the record page. This information is provided as a service to DOE-community users through an agreement with Web of Science.

Additionally, OSTI provides an interactive reference and citation traversal tool allowing DOE community users to find more research of interest. By clicking on any title in the References and Cited By lists on either side of the original item, the tree is redrawn, moving that item to the center and showing its references on the left and cited by works on the right. The original article will appear below the newly selected item, allowing users to keep track of the traversal path. Users can continue to traverse the tree, moving either backwards through references or forward through citations with the path always preserved in the center of the tree.

To create a DOE PAGES Account, select the Create Account link at the top right of your screen and enter the requested information. You are required to provide your email address and create a password. Each account must be registered with a unique email address. After registration, you will be taken to your account management screen. If you are a DOE community user, a DOE federal employee, contractor, or grantee, you are invited to provide some additional information at the time of registration, or on the account management screen.

Yes, you may refine your results by Article Type, by article Availability, Journal, Creator/Author, Publication Date, or by Research Organization. These options are available via the search results page on the left-hand side of the screen. There are also sorted by options at the top of the search results page that include sorting by relevance, publication date, or most cited.

Yes, on the results page you may use the left-hand refine option "Full Text Available" to limit your results to articles and accepted manuscripts that can be freely accessed.

Yes, if the item is available electronically, a full-text icon will be shown at the right of the result. Items in DOE PAGES are free and publicly available.

You also may save the bibliographic/metadata information for a set of results as an RIS, Excel/CSV, XML, or JSON file from the results screen.

From an individual bibliographic/metadata details page you can export the metadata to Endnote or save it in Endnote, RIS, Excel/CSV, XML, or JSON formats. You also have the option to generate a citation for the record in various style formats, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and BibTex.

By clicking the title of an article in the search results list you will be directed to the record page, which provides bibliographic information, access options, related resources, extracted images (if available), as well as citation format and metadata export options.

DOE provides access to downloadable full text of publications through various available mechanisms. When the full text accepted manuscript version of a publication is submitted to OSTI, it is made available through the Accepted Manuscript (DOE) link. OSTI also provides access to the version of record by linking to the DOI, which will take you to the publisher's publication landing page. The landing page may provide free access to the publication full text, or it may require a subscription or purchase to access. Through DOE's CHORUS agreement, some participating publishers provide access to an accepted manuscript, which is then made available through the Accepted Manuscript (Publisher) link.