Short abstract:

This paper presents a decadal study of data managements plans from the US National Science Foundation, where we observe a notable shift towards platforms, commercial cloud storage, and access restrictions that challenge many open science values that data management policies seek to address.

Long abstract:

In the age of data-driven science, the collaboration between scientists, data librarians, and data managers has given rise to tools and policies ensuring the effective management, preservation, and open access to scientific data. This paper presents a study of data managements plans (2011-2021) from United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) projects across five research domains, where we observe a notable shift towards corporate-owned platforms and commercial cloud storage for data archiving and dissemination. Simultaneously, researchers increasingly attach licensing and intellectual property restrictions to their data, challenging assumptions of open access. Our findings across different research programs underscore the complexity of institutional research environments, scientific data practices, and the impact of digital preservation and data access on open science. This decadal analysis raises critical questions about the long-term digital preservation of open scientific research and the potential impact of rentierism on platform-driven science (Birch, 2019; Mirowski, 2023). From a critical archival perspective, we emphasize the need for a closer examination of how the value within data storage infrastructures is distributed, how digital preservation and data archiving are planned by scientists, with implications for knowledge institutions providing access to and preserving scientific knowledge.