Developing a Guide to Ensuring Access to the Publications and Data of Federally Funded Transportation Research (2020)

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1 Summary This project, sponsored by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) and numbered NCHRP 20-110 is entitled “A Guide to Ensure Access to the Publications and Data of Federally Funded Transportation-Related Research.” The goal of the project was to develop guidance for state departments of transportations (DOT) to help them meet the requirements of the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan requiring preservation of the products of all federally funded transportation research. The overall project was structured into two phases. Phase I included three tasks: Task 1: Preparation of a Technical Memorandum Task 2: Development of a Conceptual Framework and Outline for Phase II Activities Task 3: Project Interim Report, including Stand-Alone Technical Memorandum and Phase II Plan The Phase I technical memorandum (Task 1) was developed through a set of subtasks, each aimed at gathering one facet of the information needed to develop the memorandum. These subtasks were: Subtask 1a: Literature review Subtask 1b: Identification of stakeholder information requirements and needs Subtask 1c: Review of data management plans Subtask 1d: Review of availability and usability of training materials Subtask 1e: Technical memorandum preparation The primary goal of Phase II was to develop guidance for state DOTs that would help them understand and comply with the requirements of the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan. Phase II included two tasks: Task 4: Implementation of an approved Phase II work plan to carry out and test implementation guidance provided in Phase I deliverables Task 5: Developing stand-alone guidance for State DOT’s, public agencies and transportation research organizations to follow in implementing the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive The four subtasks in Phase I’s information-gathering resulted in a set of individual insights that were eventually worked into the material in the guidance. These are summarized in the next paragraphs. Key observations from the literature review: 1) Research cultures and incentives are important factors, and so part of the preservation process in transportation is to look toward building a culture of sharing. The current climate in transportation indicates widespread wariness of sharing, though there is also support for the idea among researchers. 2) Transportation is characterized by variety. This is true of funding sources (both intramural and extramural), data types, data formats, and areas of specialization.

2 This complexity creates particular challenges for implementation of a general preservation program. 3) Compliance, costs, quality and metrics are areas of research and practice that are fairly new, and the majority of the research is found in the gray literature and is general rather than specific to transportation. The literature review highlighted this as a gap. Key observations from the stakeholder survey: 4) Agencies interviewed are in very different stages of implementation of the data- sharing mandate, even though all have produced a plan. Thus, some, especially the United States Geological Survey (USGS) are better developed and provide potential models or materials for use by state DOTs. 5) Infrastructure support is critical to establishing a successful system. The U.S. DOT has a distinct advantage over some other agencies that the NTL was a “born digital” organization with a mandate to provide access to transportation information. 6) Those organizations that appear to be the most advanced in implementing their approved plans have a long-standing demand for access to their research. 7) Where the culture of the community and the nature of the science is collaborative, existing mechanisms and incentives to provide access and use others research exists. Where the science is individual and competitive, cultures and incentives may be lower. 8) Agencies vary in the alignment of products and data used for daily operations of institutions, and those that are generated for research. Where the alignment is close, there are opportunities to leverage best practices managing both. 9) Researchers have little support for publication and data sharing, yet also have little knowledge of metadata standards and other key aspects of preservation for which they could use that support. Key observations from the Data Management Plans (DMP) review: 10) Data Management Plans are not well understood by researchers, yet play a critical role in preservation and sharing; emphasis on DMP support and training is required for an effective system. 11) DMPs must be emphasized as a tool for enabling (and making efficient) public access to research data 12) DMPs must be emphasized in training and DMP training needs to be provided (or mandated) for a wide variety of stakeholders in the research process (i.e., not just PIs) 13) Support for writing DMPs is critical and worthwhile. This might include references to the available tools but is not limited to that. Key observations from the training materials review: 14) Training is essential, and the USGS has good training modules that could provide a template for training specific to transportation. 15) Training addresses basic awareness for all, but also focuses on the specific training needs of stakeholder groups.

3 16) Training should also include the specific requirements for transportation. Thus, other training materials may be useful but will need to be adapted to be useful. During Phase II, the NTL published a set of essential requirements for compliance with the policy. These requirements and the associated infrastructure substantially changed the framework for the guidance that resulted from this project. In response to these developments, we framed the guidance around the ideas of meeting Essential Requirements that keep a state DOT or other research organization in compliance with the U.S. DOT policy, and going beyond the minimum to implement policies and processes that support the larger, more long-term vision of Open Science. The resulting Guide has 13 chapters, which are organized as in Figure 0-1 below. Figure 0-1 Guidance map (from Chapter 1) Chapter 1 provides background on the OSTP memo and subsequent U.S. DOT Public Access Plan in response. It includes a brief description of the guidance from the U.S. DOT, and a brief definition of Open Science. Finally, it gives an introduction to the conventions of the guide, including icons and chapter structure. Chapter 2 focuses on the Essential Requirements as described in the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan. The Public Access Plan guidance pages, hosted and maintained by the NTL, provide tips and practices for fulfilling the Essential Requirements. The

4 requirements are laid out in detail, along with the current scope of the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan (both the funding and products included). Chapter 3 focuses on going beyond the essential requirements to take actions that support the goals of Open Science. Although we do not expect state DOTs to start with this goal, we thought it was important to present the bigger picture of publication and data preservation in the context of Open Science so that they could potentially lead culture change in the field of transportation. Chapter 4 focuses on getting state DOTs (and other relevant organizations) started by implementing strategies and policies that support the public access plan. The starting point is the essential requirements. We describe how to evaluate what capabilities, structures, and processes the organization already has, and potential strategies and policies to put in place to address gaps. Then, we describe additional policies that can help the organization go beyond minimum compliance with the essential requirements and develop a long-term vision. Chapter 5 covers necessary roles and responsibilities associated with meeting the essential requirements and also to extend the state DOT’s capability. The chapter presents the USGS research data life-cycle model to give structure to roles and responsibilities. It also provides a sample worksheet for aligning specific people in the organization to those roles. Chapter 6 focuses on understanding and implementing research publication preservation. The chapter covers eligibility under essential requirements and considers other publications that might be included in going beyond. It gives basic background on how preservation is accomplished, including discussion of publication metadata. It also distinguishes between journal publications and research reports to the extent that the compliance process can be different for these. Chapter 7 is parallel to Chapter 6 but covers preservation of research data. One of the particular challenges of transportation data preservation is that there does not now exist a domain-specific repository for transportation data, nor does the U.S. DOT Public Access Plan create one. While the Public Access Plan requires NTL to create a repository for public access reports and DMPs, the Plan only requires researchers to send links to their data to the NTL. While this gives the researchers a great deal of flexibility in the data repository solution they choose, the plan does not give any guidance to state DOTs or other public entities which do not have a data repository which conforms to the Public Access Plan. Fortunately, the guidance web pages https://ntl.bts.gov/public-access/data- repositories-conformant-dot-public-access-plan do include a list of repositories that do confirm, and tips on how to choose a repository that is not on the list. Thus, meeting essential requirements calls for more decision-making on the part of the state DOT in how to handle this part of the requirements. Chapter 7 describes the specific data covered under essential requirements of the plan, guidance for determining how to meet the essential requirements, background on research data preservation and metadata, and ways to go beyond the essential requirements and preserve more of the state DOT’s research data. After the information-gathering process in Phase I and early feedback from state DOTs, we determined that it was important to have a chapter devoted exclusively to Data Management Plans (DMPs) to highlight their important role in research preservation. The

5 chapter covers DMP contents and purpose in detail, including how they fit into essential requirements and going beyond the minimum. Chapter 9 covers NTL and Transportation Research Board (TRB) infrastructure, as well as external support infrastructure that help to support preservation of transportation research products. This chapter discusses how the state DOT can make a choice about where to preserve data, and it puts the NTL and TRB registries and repositories of research projects and publications in the larger context. Training is critical to the success of the U.S. DOT public access plan, and Chapter 10 covers this topic in detail. Training elements for both essential requirements and going beyond are covered, as well as how training might be focused for people in particular roles. Potential sources of training materials are provided to help get organizations started. Chapter 11 discusses the elements of the essential requirements and going beyond that introduce costs to the organization or individual projects. Specific cost factors, budgets affected (e.g., project budget vs. organization budget), and estimation tools available on the web are all included in this chapter. Chapter 12 covers assessment of the state DOT’s program for research product preservation. Both developing and established programs need to incorporate assessment measures and a regular assessment cycle to identify areas for improvement and to evaluate impact. Finally, Chapter 13 takes the elements of all of the chapters in the Guide and puts them together into a series of practical steps and activities to put a working system of research product preservation in place. The steps correspond to chapters in the Guide and the activities are provided in checklist format. An example is in Figure 0-2 below. Figure 0-2 Example activity checklist Our goal for the Guide is to create a document that is comprehensive, yet able to be read by someone without a background in library science or data preservation. It is designed to provide enough background on specific topics (e.g., metadata) to give an understanding of the context. However, the focus is primarily on concrete steps that a state DOT can take to be in compliance with NTL’s essential requirements while laying the groundwork for the larger vision of Open Science down the road.