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University of Wisconsin–Madison

New site makes it easier for UW-Madison researchers to comply with public access requirements

Federal public access regulations impact the thousands of principal investigators on the UW-Madison campus who receive over $577 million in federal funding annually. Principal investigators can quickly meet these requirements through the new UW-Madison Public Access Service (PAS) site at pas.wisc.edu. The site covers the requirements of 22 federal agencies, including UW-Madison’s top funders: the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

“Since 2017, hundreds of UW-Madison researchers have worked with the Public Access Service to comply with federal public access requirements,” said Ryan Schryver, lead public access compliance specialist. “We’re excited to introduce the site and an improved BuckySubmit, which allow principal investigators to focus even more on their research instead of the submission of articles to federal repositories.”

Highlights:

  • The BuckySubmit tool is easier to navigate and allows the upload of large or multiple files at once;
  • Free guides to not only 22 federal agencies but also private funder public access requirements; and
  • A how-to library that includes public access presentations, regulation guides, and soon-to-be released video walk-throughs of the different submission processes.

The public access requirement was first introduced in 2008 by the National Institutes of Health. This grant condition, which has since been replicated by nearly every other federal agency, requires that any peer-reviewed paper derived from federal funding must be submitted to the funding agency’s public access repository within 12 months of publication, or the award could be halted.

The UW-Madison Public Access Service, a campus-wide unit sponsored by Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Graduate Educations and the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, assists university researchers navigate the public access to publications requirement of their awards through consultation, training, and submitting manuscripts to funders on behalf of investigators.