End the false choice of expensive research fees

For years, the fight over public access to federally funded research has circled back to a false choice: if taxpayers want access to the science they fund, they have to pay publishers to get it. That choice is now colliding with the Office of Management and Budget’s rewrite of the government-wide grants rulebook, which would make publication costs unallowable across nearly every federal agency. This opens a real opportunity to say plainly what the biggest commercial publishers have spent decades obscuring: publisher fees are not required to ensure public access in the first place.

The Government Accountability Office’s recent report on federal research publishing costs documents an $11 billion market dominated by a handful of commercial publishers who have converted a bipartisan policy designed to benefit the public into a lucrative new revenue stream, levying Article Processing Charges (APCs). APCs will cost federal agencies and individual researchers billions more over the coming years. The report treats this as unavoidable — concluding there is “no practical way” for federally funded researchers to comply without incurring the charge.

That conclusion is wrong. The policy requires only that articles reporting on taxpayer funded research be made immediately available........

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