[Hadstruct] [EXTERNAL] ChatGPT answer to Chris's question

[David Richards]

Hi Kostas,

Well, ChatGPT is certainly a more useful answer than the google AI equivalent….

David

On Sep 26, 2025, at 10:08 AM, Orginos, Konstantinos via Hadstruct <hadstruct at jlab.org> wrote:


Great question — you’ve spotted something that shows up often in technical reports but almost never in journal articles.

That disclaimer is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)–style disclaimer. It originated in DOE and other federal agency technical report templates, not as a general requirement for all federally funded research. Here’s the key background:

  *   Why it exists:
Agencies like DOE (and historically the Atomic Energy Commission, then ERDA) publish thousands of technical reports through the Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI). Because the government sponsors the work but doesn’t want legal liability for errors or implied endorsements, the disclaimer was standardized in DOE report templates.

  *   Where it appears:
It’s typically required in contractor technical reports, lab reports, and other formal deliverables submitted directly to the government.
It does not apply to peer-reviewed journal articles, conference papers, or other publications, even if the research was federally funded. Journals have their own publisher disclaimers, and agencies don’t usually mandate inserting this boilerplate there.

  *   When it became standard:
The language traces back at least to the 1970s, when DOE succeeded the Atomic Energy Commission (1974). DOE’s Order 241.1 (Scientific and Technical Information Management, first issued in the late 1990s and updated since) explicitly requires that technical reports include the disclaimer. Variants of this wording have been in DOE and NASA report templates since the 1970s–80s.

So to your point:

  *   If you’re reading journal papers funded by DOE, NSF, NIH, etc., you won’t see that disclaimer — only a funding acknowledgment.

  *   If you look at DOE technical reports (on OSTI.gov, for example), you’ll see that exact block almost every time.

👉 In short: It’s not a blanket requirement for all federally funded research. It’s a legal protection clause required on U.S. government technical reports (especially DOE/OSTI deliverables), dating back to the 1970s.

Would you like me to show you a couple of concrete DOE reports (with dates) where this disclaimer appears, so you can see when and how it was standardized?


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