Product Design Tips
Before sending your project for approval, consult EERE's standards:
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) has standards for any publications produced by the office or its tech offices. If you have questions about EERE publications, please contact the EERE Products and Branding Team.
Prepare Your Publication
Executive Secretariat Process
As part of the publication approval process, identify at the beginning stages of your publication what level of review is required for your document. DOE technical reports are required to go through the Executive Secretariat process:
Document Management. The Executive Secretariat receives, controls, and tracks correspondence and other written and electronic documents, including classified material. These documents are either addressed to the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, Under Secretaries, or members of the Office of the Secretary staff, or they are sent to the Department from the White House, the Congress, and Tribal leaders. In addition, The Executive Secretariat sets standards for document preparation through its Correspondence Guide. Information and guidance on the standards for document preparation, document handling and concurrence (or Collaborative Action Process [CAP]), are available to Departmental personnel under the Executive Secretariat on the Department’s Powerpedia, available to DOENet users only.
EERE internal users should review the Executive Secretariat FAQs document on i2 for more information about what products require this level of review.
Brand Guidelines
All publications should follow EERE Brand Guidelines during development, including:
- EERE logo use and placement in publications
- Color palette requirements for publications
- Typeface usage and weights
- Proper office icon usage
- Layout considerations and visual guidance for EERE-branded publications
- EERE templates.
Awardee Communications Guidelines
EERE maintains standards for and provides resources to awardees to help them build awareness of their work. These guidelines are to help keep consistent branding and style for all EERE-related communications, as well as provide guidance for publication of EERE-funded reports.
Artificial Intelligence Guidance
EERE maintains additional guidance on using artificial intelligence (AI) for publications. As of Feb. 7, 2024, you will need a valid business justification to access OpenAI's ChatGPT tool from your DOE computer.
Disclaimers
When national laboratories or outside organizations create an EERE-branded publication, they are required to add a publication acknowledgement statement and a legal disclaimer.
More information and example disclaimers can be found on the EERE-Branded Publications Developed by Third Parties webpage.
Accessibility Requirements
As a federal agency, EERE must comply with Section 508 standards, which give disabled employees and members of the public access to electronic information comparable to the access available to others.
Any publication or product EERE creates must comply with Section 508 standards. These standards include:
- Important information, such as data in charts and graphs, must not be conveyed through color alone.
- Text must be legible and at a readable size, as well as meet color contrast requirements.
- Whenever possible, use actual text and not images or pictures of text. Additionally, limit text used in images to convey information.
Certain types of products, such as posters or exhibit materials, should also be designed with accessibility in mind. While these types of products may not fall under Section 508 requirements, accessibility considerations extend offline into physical spaces.
Print Your Publication
As a government agency, EERE is required to use a government printing office-approved printing office. Typically, this means using either DOE headquarters Print Services or a printing office at a national laboratory. Follow the guidance on the following pages:
- Preparing Files for Publication at DOE Headquarters Print Services
- Publication Numbers and Government Printing Office Requirements.
If you have any questions about obtaining publication numbers or preparing files for printers at DOE headquarters, contact Ken Sobczak.
Submit Your Publication to the Database
All publications with any level of scientific or technical information (STI)—including fact sheets, pamphlets, technical reports, and third-party validation—must be submitted directly to the Office of Science and Technical Information (OSTI) through its E-Link portal. Adding publications to E-Link is not optional—it is a requirement mandated by Congress.
EERE-branded publications must still go through PGT approval prior to uploading to OSTI via E-Link. OSTI will notify both the STI manager, Joe Lucas, and the PGT lead of every EERE document uploaded to OSTI.
Requirements and Best Practices
When submitting content to OSTI, you should gather necessary information before beginning a submission, including:
- DOE contract/award number (if applicable).
- DOI for the accepted publication.
- Publicly accessible link or digital copy of the final accepted peer-reviewed publication.
- DOE publication number. Request a number from Ken Sobczak if you are uploading a document that has no DOE, lab, or other GPO-approved number. Even if it does not appear on the publication, the publication number should be entered in E-Link.
- Attribution to the sponsoring program, per the DOE Order 241.1B requirement that DOE-funded STI include attribution to the sponsoring program with specific wording for "the U.S. Department of Energy", the DOE program office (EERE), and the program office's subprogram(s) funding the research (Wind Energy Technologies Office, Water Power Technologies Office, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office, etc.).
You will find instructions specific to each type of STI product linked at the top of each announcement notice. Clicking the question mark following the title of a specific field will direct you to instructions relevant to that field.
It is the responsibility of submitting organizations and their respective releasing officials to ensure that no Protected Personally Identifiable Information is contained in STI reports and products submitted to OSTI.
A full video walkthrough of the OST E-Link submission process is also viewable on YouTube:
Answers to commonly asked questions are available via the E-Link FAQ page.
For additional E-Link technical assistance, please contact the E-Link product manager, Kim Buckner.