Impact of the 2022 OSTP Memo: A Bibliometric Analysis

Hat Tip to David Crotty

Of Interest to the Information Community

From the abstract of the paper:

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.

Key quote from the author's conclusion in this paper:

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 which would have qualified under this policy framework helps to clarify some questions and provide guidance still outstanding. It is clear that publishers, journals, and 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 9a, 10, and 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 should encourage their authors to submit complete, accurate, and structured funding information, and database providers should continue to extract additional 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 analysis to this on their own institution’s publications.

The full text of the preprint may be viewed here.

Citation: Preprint, Impact of the 2022 OSTP Memo: A Bibliometric Analysis of US Federally Funded Publications, 2017-2021,
E. Schares - arXiv preprint, 2022 - arxiv.org https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2210.1487