Innovations Post-Granting: Opening Access to Grant-Funded Work Product

This is the third of three posts focusing on grantmaking innovations post-granting. Earlier posts look at specific types of innovations before and during the grantmaking process. Our introduction to the series explains the importance of open grantmaking innovations and why they matter for improving the legitimacy and effectiveness of grant-based public investments.

Summary: Increasing access to the work product developed as a result of a grant helps ensure that the public can benefit from the knowledge that grantees produce.

In contrast to opening data about grantmaking expenditures, there are also innovations focused on increasing access to the knowledge developed through grantmaking practices, to ensure that the public can benefit from and build on the knowledge that grantees produce. Dr. John Holdren, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), promulgated a Memorandum Expanding Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research in 2013 to advocate for the use of open-access policies throughout the federal government, directing “each federal agency with over $100 million in annual conduct of research and development expenditures to develop a plan to support increased public access to the results of research funded by the Federal Government.”

The Holdren memo was in turn inspired by the practice of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which requires that all papers it funds that are accepted for publication be made publicly accessible, for free, on its PubMed Central archive. Taking a slower approach, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded a one-year pilot study to encourage researchers to file a “data management plan” to explain how they would share their research data (or explain why they cannot). NSF opted for the pilot to enable it to hear from its grantees as to what challenges, such as unforeseen costs or privacy issues, opening up the underlying datasets used in a research project would create. Now NSF is following suit and headed toward open access across the board.

Relatedly, the NIH also mandates that certain categories of clinical trials make results available through clinicaltrials.gov, and can withhold funding if an applicable trial fails to do so. However, partly out of a concern that this NIH mandate was both overly narrow in scope and insufficiently enforced, a parallel advocacy campaign, AllTrials, is securing commitments from private companies and research institutions to publish the full results of clinical drug trials. AllTrials is also in discussions with hedge funds investing in these companies to make funding contingent upon disclosure.

Outside the realm of scientific research, the Department of Labor’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program requires grantees to make the educational training materials they develop with the Department’s $2 billion in initial workforce training grants fully re-usable under a Creative Commons license, including by commercial third-parties. Many foundations are also starting to adopt this model: Foundation Center’s IssueLab, for instance, brings together case studies, evaluations, white papers, and issue briefs from a broad range of nonprofits to make the collective intelligence of the social sector more easily accessible.

With a few years of experience with open access policies, it is now time for a systematic and empirical review of agencies’ progress and, more important, assessment of which innovators are using the newly-available material, and how, to solve public problems and advance the public good.

Why Use It:

• Enhancing Access: Open access increases access to the knowledge produced with grant-funding. By giving people the ability to scrutinize the underlying work product, open access can potentially accelerate additional advances in knowledge and new kinds of problem-solving. In addition to enabling collaboration, it can enhance trust in the grantmaking process.
• Spurring Innovation: Open access can promote third-party innovation by enabling newcomers to build upon the work product created by grantees.
• Magnifying Impact: By opening up access to underlying work product, agencies can make their limited grantmaking dollars go further in advancing their missions.

Why Not to Use It:

• IP Incentives: There may be instances in which allowing grantees to retain certain IP rights is important for attracting quality applicants.
• Absence of Evidence: There is a not a lot of understanding of the circumstances under which open access promotes innovation best.
• Monetizing First Sale Rights: In some grant grant competitions, investors will offer to fund second-and third-place winners not funded by the government, if they can retain rights.

This is the final post in our series on open and effective grantmaking. Click here to return to the table of contents for an at-a-glance look at the whole publication.