A23b Attachment 2 - Sole Source Justification.pdf

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

WASHINGTON HEADQUARTERS SERVICES

1155 DEFENSE PENTAGON

WASHINGTON, DC 20301-1155

ACQUISITION

DIRECTORATE

Control No. WHS-2022-WHS-0251

SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION UNDER SIMPLIFIED PROCEDURES

FOR CERTAIN COMMERCIAL ITEMS

UNDER FEDERAL ACQUISITION REGULATION (FAR) 13.5

1. AGENCY AND CONTRACTING ACTIVITY: The Department of Defense, Washington Headquarters Services, Acquisition Directorate, Enterprise Research and Engineering Division (ERED)

2. DESCRIPTION OF ACTION: This action requests the approval for a justification for other than full and open competition for the procurement of an annual membership in CrossRef and establishment of Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for both legacy and new public technical reports. The DOIs are required for public access to DTIC’s Public Technical Reports. The DOIs ensure a persistent location and actionable identifier for DTIC’s online intellectual property and add value to DTIC’s electronic documents by providing a linking agreement with all publishers and providing inbound links from publisher’s cited sources. Because a DOI link is a persistent link unlike a Uniform Resource Locator (URL), publishers and others who use CrossRef create reliable, persistent links in citations and database records. Additionally, a single agreement with CrossRef serves as a linking agreement with all participating publishers, therefore avoiding the requirement to sign numerous bilateral linking agreements with publishers. There is a need for DTICs technical reports to have persistent identifiers that publishers would accept to put in journal article bibliographies when a technical report is cited, and to allow crawlers and citation indexes like Google Scholar to create bibliometrics on how important each document was in the field.

3. DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES/SERVICES: DTIC is required to renew the annual membership with Publishers International Linking Association (PILA dba CrossRef). The annual membership must include up to 10,000 DOIs annually for new documents, and an excess of up to 10,000 legacy (pre-2021) documents in the first year. The period of performance will be for one base year plus four option years.

The estimated total value for this procurement is as follows:

Performance Periods Performance Period Dates Base Period 01Mar 2022 – 28 Feb 2023 Option Period I 01 Mar 2023 – 29 Feb 2024 Option Period II 01 Mar 2024 – 28 Feb 2025

Option Period III 01 Mar 2025 – 28 Feb 2026 Option Period IV 01 Mar 2026 – 28 Feb 2027 Base + All Options

4. AUTHORITY CITED: This action is under the procedures of under the procedures of

Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 13.5 under the authority of:

☒41 U.S.C. 1901, Simplified Acquisition Procedures ☐41 U.S.C. 1903, Special Emergency Procurement Authority

5. REASONS FOR AUTHORITY CITED: CrossRef is the implementation for DOIs in the United States. Other Federal Agencies such as the Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health are members of CrossRef and use their DOIs for their publications.

The requirement for DOIs for DoD technical reports came from DoD researchers, who need to be able to cite their technical reports in their journal articles and were not able to, since the technical reports did not have persistent IDs (DOIs). The DoD Services have informed DTIC that it is very hard to encourage researchers to create technical reports, if they cannot cite them in their public journal articles. There is also a requirement that these technical reports be shown in standard industry metrics, such as in Google Scholar, to show the entire body of a DoD researcher’s public work. Journal publishers also require DOIs in the journal article bibliographies for all documents.

Originally, DTIC met this requirement through a credit card-level service from the University of California Digital Library (CDL) called EZID (Easy-Eye-Dee). However, in 2017, CDL decided to only offer its services to the University of California community. DTIC then created a 5-year sole source contract to CrossRef, and proceeded to modify our DOI assignment tool to move its feed from EZID to CrossRef. Since that contract ended, DTIC needed to continue to create DOIs for DoD created publications.

Based on the issues of availability of resources, DTIC decided to acquire the annual membership with Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA) (doing business as CrossRef) for the use of DOIs to access public technical reports. The previous contract, HQ0034-18-P-0160, was awarded on to CrossRef as a sole source procurement using the FAR Part 13 Simplified Acquisition procedures. The contract was awarded with a period of performance of one base year plus two option years. Option Year 3 of the contract expired on 31 December 2021.

If DTIC cannot assign DOIs to technical reports, then DoD researchers will not be able to cite their technical reports in their journal articles. The Army Research Office informed DTIC that it is very difficult to make the researchers create technical reports. Journal articles are how basic researchers receive recognition from their communities and get prestige from their research.

Unfortunately, journal articles are fairly short. Technical Reports are longer and give more detail on the background and processes involved in the research so it can be replicated and used more easily. The DoD needs the researchers to record more detailed information for the research in order for the information to be reused for further research more easily and to give new technology to warfighters. Therefore, this requirement will be solicited in accordance with FAR 13.106-1(b) – only one source reasonably available.

6. EFFORTS TO OBTAIN COMPETITION: Market research was conducted on DoD Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI), NASA SEWP V and GSA E-Library which resulted in no findings. A sources sought notification posted to SAM.Gov from 24 Nov 2021 to 01 Dec 2021 received no responses. A review of previous purchases on System for Award Management (SAM) revealed these same services have been procured by WHS and other agencies as sole source acquisitions. A search on SBA Quick Dynamic Search for NAICS “519130” and keywords “Object Identifier” did not yield any results. In addition, research on www.doi.org indicated there are other registration agencies but they are located Overseas - Outside Continental United States (OCONUS) and are for other types of data, such as movie and television data or Chinese/Japanese/European journal articles and books.

7. FAIR AND REASONABLE COST DETERMINATION: Given the limited sources for service market research provided from DTIC, indicates the pricing to be fair and equitable for DTIC’s request. The Contracting Officer hereby determines that this action represents the best value to the Government.

8. MARKET RESEARCH:

Market research was conducted through the DoD ESI website at https://www.esi.mil/ to assess if there is an enterprise service agreement for this type of requirement. Market research resulted in no findings.

Market research was conducted through the NASA SEWP V market research tool to find the provider, PILA and CrossRef. Market research resulted in no findings.

Market research was conducted through the GSA E-Library to find out if there is a GSA reseller that could provide the Government’s requirements. Market research resulted in no findings.

Market research was conducted on the System for Award Management (SAM) by looking for other agencies that may have awarded contracts for the same or similar type of requirement. As a result, the findings indicated that the Department of Energy (DoE) has a contract that was awarded as sole source to Crossref for the similar type of requirement.

A sources sought notification posted on SAM.Gov from 24 Nov 2021 to 01 Dec 2021, which resulted in no responses. A search on SBA Quick Dynamic Search for NAICS “519130” and keywords “Object Identifier” did not yield any results. A Google search for DOI Registration Agencies revealed CrossRef is the only agency located in the US that could provide the required services.

Based on the market research conducted, PILA dba CrossRef is the only organization in the United States that assigns DOIs for the United States for tracking and discovery of DOIs for publications and also allows the viewing of DOI names in the context of references to scientific and technical journal articles and book chapters. There are other registration agencies but they are located outside of the US, and are for other types of data, such as movie and television data or Chinese/Japanese/European journal articles and books. The service requires a US registrar and needs to assign DOIs to the central doi.org registration. One alternative is the Multilingual European DOI European DOI Registration Agency (MEDRA). Under the Multilingual European DOI Registration Agency, DTIC would need to create new interface software, pay additional costs to join and much more per registered DOI, and must be paid in Euros.

9. ANY OTHER FACTS SUPPORTING THE USE OF SOLE SOURCE:

Other agencies such as the Department of Energy and National Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine have similar requirement and have acquired this service through sole source procurement to CrossRef. Based on the above market research, Crossref is the only organization in Continental United States (CONUS) that can provide the required services.

10. INTERESTED SOURCES:

Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA dba CrossRef), Cage Code: 4DTH6, DUNS: 155894251, https://www.crossref.org/

11. ACTIONS TO INCREASE COMPETITION:

Based on market research, future procurements will be other than full and open competition unless another source providing an equal and interoperable product can be found.

12. Is this acquisition for a non-competitive follow-on acquisition previously awarded on a non-competitive basis?

☒Yes. A copy of the previous justification is attached. The actions to remove any barriers to competition cited on the previous justification ☒ were ☐ were not completed

☐No. The original acquisition was conducted on a competitive basis.

☐Not Applicable. This is a new requirement.

CERTIFICATION

I, hereby, certify that the supporting data under my cognizance included in this justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.