I.3 Current Agency Policies and Other Data Access Precedents

This section of CRE comments provides several examples of policies, regulations, guidelines, and other statements on data access that have been issued by federal agencies, professional organizations and journals, commentators, academic institutions, and state legislatures. The section is not intended as a comprehensive listing of all such statements. Its purposes instead are to (1) demonstrate the widespread support for broad access to research data; (2) make clear that workable policies that achieve meaningful public access to federal research data can be accomplished; (3) give a flavor of the current disparity among different data access rules; and (4) provide possible models to assist OMB in crafting a more uniform federal data access policy.