July 15, 2026

Open Access (OA) means that scholarly work is available online without financial, legal, or technical barriers for readers. OA does not mean authors give up ownership of their work; rights, reuse, and sharing are still governed by publication agreements and licenses. In practice, there are several routes to Open Access, only one of which incurs an Article Processing Charge (APC): Gold OA usually means publishing in a fully open access journal, sometimes with an article processing charge (APC); Diamond OA (sometimes Platinum OA) is a form of open access where the work is free to read and authors are not charged APCs, often because costs are supported by libraries, universities, scholarly societies, or consortia. Here at K-State, K-State Libraries runs New Prairie Press, a Diamond OA publishing program that supports open access journals, books, textbooks, and conference publications; Green OA means depositing a version of your work, often the accepted manuscript, in a trusted repository so it can be discovered, read, and preserved even if the final published version remains behind a paywall. At K-State, K-State Research Exchange (K-REx) is the university’s institutional repository and is available for Green OA deposit.

Open Data is the related idea that research data should be shared in ways that make it findable, accessible, reusable, and appropriately preserved, while still respecting privacy, confidentiality, security, intellectual property, and other legitimate limits. Federal policy is increasingly moving in this direction. The 2022 OSTP public access memo, often called the Nelson Memo, directs federal agencies to make federally funded publications and their supporting data publicly accessible without embargo, and the current OMB-2026-0034 docket includes proposed federal grant rule changes that touch both publication costs and data/evaluation costs. For K-State researchers, the takeaway is: open access and open data expectations are becoming a normal part of the research lifecycle, especially for federally funded work.

K-State Libraries can help you think through which route makes sense, whether that means using an OA publishing agreement, depositing an accepted manuscript in K-REx, publishing through New Prairie Press, or planning for data sharing and preservation earlier in the project: ope@ksu.edu

Further Reading:

- OpenAccess.nl. (n.d.). What is open access? 
- Nelson, A. (2022). Ensuring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research. Office of Science and Technology Policy. 
- Office of Management and Budget. (2026). Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance. Federal Register. 
- K-State Libraries. (n.d.). New Prairie Press. 
- K-State Libraries. (n.d.). K-State Research Exchange. 

NSF webinars & office hours:

The U.S. National Science Foundation invites you to attend a Q&A discussion for the NSF Pathways to Enable Secure Open-Source Ecosystems (NSF PESOSE) program on July 21 from 12-1 p.m.

The NSF PESOSE program helps translate open-source research products, including software, hardware, machine learning models, languages and data platforms, into safe and sustainable ecosystems that address national and societal challenges. The program also promotes strong governance, collaborative development and broad engagement across academia, industry and government. Additionally, the program aims to enhance the safety, security, and privacy of open-source ecosystems by addressing key vulnerabilities and improving resilience against threats.

Register in advance.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has announced a Pitch Day for the Multi X Office (MXO) to catalyze future research efforts.

The MXO Pitch Day aims to fund scientific discovery solutions within three specific thrust areas: a world beyond electronics, foundations beyond components, and materials beyond nature and current synthetic practice. DARPA is seeking proposals from non-traditional organizations, small businesses, and university principal investigators who have not previously received a DARPA-funded award as a prime performer. The program seeks to reduce technical uncertainty and generate new concepts in non-electronic or hybrid physical approaches, resilient components for extreme environments, and novel material synthesis.

Performers are expected to provide a clear technical approach, risk mitigation strategy, and evidence of feasibility for efforts not to exceed 12 months in duration.

The event will be held in-person on November 2, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois, with abstract submissions due by July 29, 2026. Total funding per award is capped at $500,000.

The full solicitation is available here.

The NIAID Small Business Program will be hosting a virtual SBIR/STTR Office Hours event on August 5, 2026, from 12-1 p.m. These events will include a brief SBIR/STTR program overview and then members of the NIAID Small Business Program staff will be available to answer your questions, which can be submitted in advance during registration.

Please register and join us for an informative session.

The event is capped at 100 registrants; spots are available on a first come first served basis.