Department of Energy public access policy

What do I need to submit to DOE?

Journal articles, conference papers, and technical reports produced in whole or in part by Department of Energy funding. The policy applies to awards made for proposals or renewals on or after October 1, 2014, either the publisher’s version of record if openly available and without charge or the final accepted version.

Do I have the rights?

The Federal Government claims a license to exercise all rights under copyright to use a federally-funded work for federal purposes, including depositing works resulting from DOE funded research in an open access repository.  In general, publisher policies allow for authors to comply with DOE policy, though they often require a delay in making publications available. With this in mind, DOE allows for an embargo of public access to such works up to twelve months after publication. However, they also require that the metadata and abstract about the scholarly publication be publicly available at the time of publication.

Where do I submit?

Log in to Energy Link System (E-link). No login or password is required

When do I need to submit?

Journal or conference publications resulting from DOE funding should be submitted to PAGES once they are published.

How do I submit? 

Before submitting your publications, you will need to

  • Know your DOE Award/Contract number
  • Have the DOI for the publication (or manually enter article metadata)
  • Have a copy of the journal article or juried conference paper formatted as a PDF (prefer PDF/A or PDF/UA), Microsoft Word document, or OpenOffice/OpenDocument; or link to the article or conference paper on the publisher’s website or your University’s institutional repository.
  1. Go to E-link and choose Financial Assistance Recipients
  2. Select the “Final technical report, journal article-accepted manuscript, or other STI product” wizard” link
  3. Follow the 6-Step deposit wizard
  4. Upload the Final Accepted Manuscript Version in PDF/A format or a link to the full text version of the accepted manuscript on your institutional repository.
  5. Review the publication information and select “Submit”.

For more information from DOE, see STIP Public Access FAQs, and E-Link FAQ.

Additional information, contacts, and questions may be sent to 241user@osti.gov.

Are there any compliance requirements?

DOE will work with FundRef to facilitate tracking of publications resulting from DOE funding to assess and address any gaps in the PAGES repository. While FundRef matures, OSTI will use various citation sources (using “acknowledgement” and “affiliation” fields) to identify any gaps in the PAGES metadata submissions. At full maturity, FundRef will be the primary tool for identifying how many accepted manuscripts should be included in PAGES in a given year. OSTI will work with STI managers at labs and the University’s Sponsored Projects to acquire any missing manuscript links and metadata. For the participating publishers in CHORUS, the FundRef tool will identify any article not properly represented and available through PAGES.

Contact: Public Access Working Group