Public Access to Scholarly Publications and Digital Scientific Research Data Assets: Frequently Asked Questions

All NIFA awardees and contractors who are engaged in USDA-supported scientific research and NIFA employees who engage in scientific research during official duties. This involves all unclassified scientific research, including intramural research and extramural research, that is supported wholly or in part by the USDA, regardless of the USDA funding level or funding mechanism. This includes any of the following types of NIFA funding:

• Awards, contracts, and cooperative agreements starting on or after October 1, 2022.
• Any awards, contracts, and cooperative agreements previously awarded which are active in FY 2023 and any fiscal years moving forward.
• Any direct funding or arrangement, including in-kind support, from any USDA Intramural Research.

This policy covers scholarly publications and digital scientific research data assets produced in whole or in part using NIFA funding.

Awardees and contractors who use NIFA funding, but do not produce scholarly publications and/or digital scientific research data assets do not need to take these actions unless they generate either of those products during their funding’s period of performance.

USDA defines a Scholarly Publication as a peer-reviewed publication that disseminates scientific research findings and communicates insights, intended for an audience of researchers, scholars, or scientists. The term specifically applies to peer-reviewed journal articles published by nongovernmental organizations.

• Final peer-reviewed, accepted manuscripts must be made freely accessible to the public through PubAg, hosted by the USDA National Agriculture Library (NAL). Currently, public access through PubAg must be established within 12 months of the date on which the publisher makes the article available online. In the future, this timeline is likely to change to require submission of manuscripts to PubAg by the date of publication. 
  • To submit a manuscript, USDA staff and researchers and USDA awardees must have an eAuth account to log into the PubAg submission site.
• Scholarly publications must receive digital persistent identifiers, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). 
• All authors of scholarly publications must have individual digital persistent identifiers, such as the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID), that are linked to their scholarly publications. 

To submit a manuscript, USDA staff and researchers and USDA awardees must have an eAuthorization account to log into the PubAg submission site. If you have a Login.gov account, that can be linked to eAuth to login as well.

If you already have an eAuth account for logging into the NIFA Reporting System (capacity grant reporting) or any other USDA system that requires eAuth, you can use the same account for PubAg.

Both Level 1 (identity unverified) and Level 2 (identity verified) assurance eAuth accounts will work for logging into PubAg.

USDA employees and contractors with USDA provided eAuthorization accounts can also log into PubAg to submit items to PubAg.

When submitting a manuscript to PubAg, in the USDA Funding Information section:

• Agency Name: Select NIFA from the drop-down menu
• Award/Grant Number: For NIFA competitive grants, please provide your 14-digit award number in this format (20XX-XXXXX-XXXXX)
  • You can find your award number on your Award Face Sheet or listed in REEport.
  • Do not use your original proposal number.
• Project Number: You may leave this field blank

When submitting a manuscript to PubAg, in the USDA Funding Information section:

• Agency Name: Select NIFA from the drop-down menu
• Enter Award/Grant Number: For capacity programs (e.g., Hatch, McIntire-Stennis), please report your 7-digit accession number (XXXXXXX)
  • You can find your accession number in the NIFA Reporting System (NRS).
  • Do not use your organizational number.
• Project Number: You may leave this field blank

You can contact the National Agricultural Library through Ask a Question on their website if you need technical assistance or have other questions about PubAg.

USDA defines a Digital Scientific Research Data Asset as a digitally formatted data asset resulting from unclassified scientific research supported wholly or in part by the USDA. The digital recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate scientific research findings includes data used to support scholarly publications, but does not include laboratory notebooks, preliminary analyses, draft manuscripts, plans for future scientific research, peer review reports, communications with colleagues, or physical objects, such as laboratory specimens. Data assets arising from routine analysis in support of program operations are not considered digital scientific research data assets, even if they are related to intramural or extramural scientific research supported by the USDA.

• All competitively awarded grants expected to produce data assets must describe in an approved Data Management Plan how the data assets will be made publicly accessible and/or describe any exemptions to the public access policy.
• Data assets connected to a scholarly publication covered by this policy must receive a digital persistent identifier, such as a DOI, that allows a scholarly publication and its catalog metadata to link to the published digital scientific research data asset from which the publication was developed. 
• Data assets must be published in a machine-readable format in a reputable repository that: provides a digital persistent identifier, such as DOI; allows for public search, retrieval, and analysis; and provides long-term preservation of the data asset. 
• Data assets must be made publicly available as soon as possible, and within 12 months of the publication date of an associated publication, or the end of the performance or funding period, whichever comes first. 
• All associated data authors for data assets covered under this policy must have digital persistent identifiers that are linked to the data asset.
• Within 12 months of the publication of the data asset in a repository, a standardized metadata catalog entry of the data asset must be submitted to Ag Data Commons. 
  • Account creation is required to access the Ag Data Commons submission form, as specified in the Data Submission Manual.

Yes, assets are exempted if they meet any of the following exemption criteria: 

1. Computational models and computational model-related content and/or 
2. Data from secondary sources. 

Although these digital scientific research data assets are exempt from public access requirements, data authors are encouraged to make these assets publicly accessible if this information is not subject to any other statutory restrictions. Please see the question below about data assets that are exempted from public access requirements.

Competitively awarded grants with a Data Management Plan must specify which exemption(s), if any, apply to their data assets under the public access policy and explain why they qualify for the listed exemption(s).

The following data assets are not required to be made publicly available:

1. Data that would not be necessary for validation of scientific research findings (i.e., trivial data);
2. Data assets that include personally identifiable information or other information that could enable re-identification of individuals or businesses, alone or in combination with other publicly available information;
3. Proprietary data assets;
4. Data assets related to protecting critical infrastructure;
5. Data assets related to the physical location of threatened or endangered species or sensitive archaeological sites;
6. Data assets for which release would be inconsistent with U.S. national, homeland, or economic security or would have significant negative impact on intellectual property rights, innovation, and U.S. competitiveness;
7. Data assets for which public access is inconsistent with the agency or staff office mission (e.g., documents designated as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI))
8. Other data assets whose release is limited by law, regulation, contract, agreement, national security requirements, or policy (e.g., classified data or dual-use research data); and
9. Data covered by a FOIA exemption.

If a data asset is believed to qualify for an exemption, the Data Management Plan must specify which exemption(s) apply to their data assets under the public access policy and explain why.

Account creation is required to access the Ag Data Commons submission form, as specified in the Data Submission Manual. Click on Log In and then select Register to create an account.

Ag Data Commons currently does not use eAuthorization or Login.gov, but that may change in the future.

You can contact the National Agricultural Library through Ask a Question on their website if you need technical assistance or have other questions about Ag Data Commons.

• NAL Public Access and Open Science at USDA – includes additional information about public access at USDA as well as Frequently Asked Questions
• PubAg Manuscript Submissions site – includes information on creating an eAuth account to access the submission page
• Ag Data Commons Data Submission Manual – includes information on creating a login to access the submission page
• White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memos
  • February 22, 2013 - OSTP Memo
  • August 25, 2022 - OSTP Memo 
• USDA Departmental Regulation (DR) 1020-006 (July 20, 2022)
• USDA Implementation Plan to Increase Public Access to USDA-Funded Research Results (June 2023)
• NIFA Point of Contact: Planning, Accountability, and Reporting Staff (PARS), electronic@usda.gov
• National Agricultural Library (NAL) Contacts:
  • Ask a Question (NAL) – for both PubAg and Ag Data Commons
  • NAL PubAg Curator, nal-pubag-curator@usda.gov