In February of 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issued a memorandum requiring that most federally funded research be made freely accessible to the general public. A formal DOE policy followed, and the Lab subsequently created its own consistent policy. In short, all work from Lab scientists must be made publicly available. This is usually referred to as “open access”. This is mandatory, and it is retroactive to October 2015.

It is a DOE and UC requirement that all publications associated with Berkeley Lab be tracked and linked to an open access version. The open access version may be a copy of the published version of the paper if the journal permits it, a link to permanently open access version at a journal or other repository, or the author's final peer-reviewed manuscript. More information on these situations is available within the tool. For our compliance purposes, this open access policy applies from October 2015 onward.

Learn more at the Berkeley Lab publications website or deposit your publications using the UC Publication Management System.

Additional open access policies cover all UC faculty and staff, and are described at the University of California Office of Scholarly Communication website. The requirements are similar; if an author has complied with the Berkeley Lab policy for a particular article, they are already in compliance with the UC systemwide policies.