Government information is information published, compiled, or created by a government entity, including federal, state, local, and international governments. Since the government uses and funds research for a wide range of purposes, there is likely to be government information relevant to you, regardless of your field. Some areas of government research are well known, such as research on space or environmental research. The government also funds and supports research on other topics that are highly relevant to government functions, such as educational research and agricultural research. Government information is also relevant to researchers outside of STEM fields. For example, the National Endowment for the Humanities has a growing digital repository.
If you are interested in open science, government information is a great example of open science in action. Since 2013, many government agencies that fund research have been implementing public access policies, requiring federally-funded research to be published openly in repositories such as PubMed Central, making it freely available to researchers all over the world, as well as to the general public. The federal government has also been a leader in the push for open research data, resulting in a rich variety of openly available datasets on Data.gov. Some agencies, such as NASA are pushing their policies even further, embracing the whole spectrum of open science practices, including open access publishing, open data, open processes, and reproducible science. For those of you looking to practice and promote open science, using and promoting government information is a great way to make research open, accessible, and reproducible.
As information produced by the federal government in the United States is typically in the public domain, U.S. government information is free to use, regardless of what institution you work at or what kind of database access you have. This also makes it ideal for teaching, as students will be able to access it easily. Since people outside of academia will also be able to access government information, it is very useful for communicating with the public. Federal research that is in the public domain can be particularly helpful for developing open educational resources by reusing, redistributing, remixing, revising, and retaining the resources without limitations. Government information also contains data that simply cannot be found elsewhere. For example, the U.S. Census is the single largest and most comprehensive source of population statistics produced in the country, and much of its results are freely available to researchers. Don’t forget that you are already paying for all these resources with your tax dollars, so you may as well take advantage.
Government information covers just about any topic a researcher could imagine, and does so in a way that is free, reusable, and sustainable. Whether you are just looking for a reliable article, have a need for rich datasets, or want to contribute to an open and equitable research ecosystem, look to government information sources!
As a Federal Depository Library, ASU Library collects a vast amount of government information, including federal resources as well as Arizona state and local government information. If you need help finding government information or would like to learn more about any of the topics addressed in this article, check out our Federal Government Information Library Guide, or reach out to the Government Information Team!
