KEY TAKEAWAYS
- OA publishing can place financial stress on authors, but avenues like publisher discounts can offset costs and improve equity.
- Immediate OA mandates for US federally funded research challenge publishing models and author’s control over their work.
Debate continues following the 2022 White House directive mandating immediate open access (OA) for all US federally funded research by the end of 2025. While OA publication has many virtues, including improving access to research and citation diversity, some issues are far from resolved.
Are OA fees prohibitive for authors?
Challenges for OA publication include inequitable opportunities and inconsistent benefits to visibility in the scientific space. In a recent Career Feature article in Nature, Nikki Forrester builds on reports of prohibitive article processing charges, particularly for authors in low- and middle-income countries. Forrester shares advice on offsetting OA costs from experienced researchers, such as:
- seeking support from co-authors, funders, or institutions
- taking advantage of scientific society grants (eg, in partnership with Research4Life)
- utilising publisher fee waivers and discounts, where available.
How will OA mandates affect publishers?
Scientific publishing models rely on payment from authors and subscriptions, and are threatened by immediate OA, notes Kathryn Palmer for Inside Higher Ed: the 2022 directive will require embargo-free deposition of publications in designated, publicly accessible repositories.
Further, some libraries have pushed for use of the federal purpose licence for federally funded work—allowing free publication and reproduction—to simplify processes for authors. US Congress and publishing associations are concerned this move would limit authors’ control, with broad OA licences permitting reproduction, modification, and commercialisation. Given the federal purpose licence is non-exclusive, author and library bodies have rebuffed some copyright-related concerns, simply seeing a “business model conflict” for publishers who held exclusive copyright for articles published under subscription models.
Given the federal purpose licence is non-exclusive, author and library bodies have rebuffed some copyright-related concerns, simply seeing a “business model conflict” for publishers.
In any case, Palmer notes that publishers will face difficult decisions as the OA landscape continues to shift.
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