§6623 Interagency Public Access Committee

Summary

The Director must set up a working group under the National Science and Technology Council to help coordinate how Federal science agencies share and preserve unclassified research results. That includes digital data and peer‑reviewed publications paid for in whole or in part by those agencies. The group must identify goals and public interests, account for differences across agencies and fields, help set or pick standards for data, full text, metadata, and tools so systems work together, support work on preservation tools and training, work with international partners, get input from outside groups (like universities, publishers, libraries, researchers, and the public), set priorities for agency public‑access policies, note the difference between data and publications, recognize the role of publishers in peer review, and review agency practices for locating and preserving research. The group’s work cannot override rights under title 17 or 35 or change existing public‑access law. The Director must send a report to Congress within 1 year after January 4, 2011 describing the group’s objectives, priorities, impacts (including financial effects on research budgets), the status of agency public‑access policies, and how outside input was used. A “Federal science agency” here means any Federal agency with annual extramural research spending over $100,000,000.