Open Science at the U.S. Census Bureau strengthens transparency and reproducibility by sharing federally funded research outputs and scientific data with the public.

The Census Bureau Library offers access to Census Bureau published research, working papers, and curated resources, helping users explore, cite, and build upon existing research.

Peer‑reviewed publications and associated scientific data resulting from research funded wholly or in part by the Census Bureau must be made publicly accessible to support transparency, reproducibility, and open science.

This policy ensures that research outputs are deposited into trusted repositories and made available without embargo, in alignment with public access requirements.

The policy applies to internal Census Bureau research, joint projects with federal agencies or nonprofits, and external researchers contributing to internal projects when the work is partially or fully funded by the Census Bureau.

It includes peer‑reviewed articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, and all scientific data supporting these products.

Authors must deposit their accepted peer‑reviewed manuscripts—and where possible, final published versions—into a publicly accessible repository at the time of publication.

Scientific data underlying publications must be shared unless restricted by law, confidentiality protections, or data use agreements. Even when data are restricted-use, internal projects are required to cite all underlying data used in the publication (refer to the Statistical Quality Standards). Authors may also releases statistical software code or replication packages to help reproducibility efforts when data cannot be made public.

The Census Bureau maintains confidential microdata and provides selected restricted‑use datasets to qualified researchers through secure access points such as FSRDCs and the Remote Access Program via the Standard Application Process. For more information, refer to Restricted-Use Data.