§19053 Research reproducibility and replicability

Summary

The Foundation's Director must make research products like data, software, and code from funded projects available to the public, while following privacy, intellectual property, and security rules. Every funding proposal must include a machine-readable data management plan that explains how the project’s data, software, and code will be archived and kept accessible. The Director must give trainings and other help so researchers, students, program officers, and review panels can make and judge good plans, and must make sure plans are treated as an important part of proposals when appropriate. The Director must work with other federal agencies and the research community to create criteria for trusted open repositories that fit different fields and protect sensitive information. The Director must find gaps and support building or improving repositories by making competitive grants to colleges and non-profits. The Director must also create a single public web page to help people find repositories holding Foundation-funded materials, encourage deposits of data at the time of publication when practical, offer incentives to deposit data, coordinate with publishers and agencies on voluntary standards, and fund open-source tools, research on computational reproducibility, and training to improve reproducible research and sharing.