Advancing Long-term Reuse of Scientific Data

Dear Colleagues:

Through this Dear Colleague Letter (DCL), the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC) announces its intention to support initial exploratory activities toward the creation of social and technical infrastructure solutions that further NSF’s commitment to public access. These solutions are a means to accelerate the dissemination and use of fundamental research results in the form of data that will advance the frontiers of knowledge and help sustain the Nation’s prosperity well into the future.

NSF supports fundamental research grants that result in publications, primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work performed under these grants [see NSF’s Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) Chapter XI.D.4, https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappg18_1/pappg_11.jsp#XID4 for details]. This particular DCL is focused on exploratory solutions that advance public access by reducing the barriers to data reuse within the scientific community, as guided by NSF’s public access plan, Today’s Data, Tomorrow’s Discoveries (see https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf15052).

Specifically, this DCL encourages two types of funding requests: (1) proposals for Conferences (i.e., community workshops and other events) that are designed to bring together stakeholders to explore opportunities to converge on innovative solutions to advancing public access; and (2) proposals for Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) for high-risk/high-reward innovative concepts and pilot projects that yield new fundamental research discoveries from existing NSF-funded data or that ultimately result in deployment of ambitious, sustainable socio-technical infrastructure resources and capabilities that enhance and accelerate new discoveries from existing NSF-funded data. Research ideas that do not advance public access as narrowly defined in this DCL may be suitable for other solicitations such as Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI) – Data and Software (see https://www.nsf.gov/publications/pub_summ.jsp?ods_key=nsf18531).

…