"Research Groups Oppose Capping #NIH Funding of Publisher Fees."
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/12/16/research-groups-oppose-capping-nih-funding

PS: These universities seem to be saying: "We accept the growth of the APC model. We just need help paying APCs." They don't take any responsibility for steering authors toward high-prestige, high-JIF, high-APC journals, and don't acknowledge their ability to change those incentives while upholding their historic standards of quality. They could say instead, "We will revise our research assessment (promotion and tenure) procedures to focus on the quality of research more than where it is published." Insofar as universities succeed at shifting those incentives -- admittedly a long game -- authors could submit work to no-fee or diamond OA journals, bypass APC-based journals, and face no blowback from their P&T committees. All researchers and research institutions would win, including those institutions that now want govt help in paying APCs.

#Academia #AcademicMastodon #APCs #Assessment #DiamondOA #OAintheUSA #OpenAccess #ScholComm #Universities

Research Groups Oppose Capping NIH Funding of Publisher Fees

The National Institutes of Health received roughly 900 comments on its various proposals to limit how much of its grant dollars are eaten up by journals’ publication charges. Major science groups called the approaches wrong.

Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

1/ I'm sympathetic to #NIH-funded authors who want to publish in certain #APC-based #OpenAccess journals and can't find the money to pay the APCs. But it's false to say that they must publish in those journals, in any other APC-based OA journals, or even in OA journals. Shame on _Inside Higher Ed_ for leaving this false impression..
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/research/2025/12/05/nih-policy-holding-researchers-hostage

PS: I repeat: Compliance with the NIH OA policy is free of charge. Moreover, compliance is all about depositing in a certain repository, not publishing in a certain journal or kind of journal. The NIH has a #GreenOA policy, not a #GoldOA policy. The same is true for all the other federal agencies with OA policies, not just the NIH. When a journal charges NIH-funded authors an APC to publish, the fee is to publish in that particular journal, not to comply with the NIH policy. Don't be fooled by the widespread misunderstanding that compliance with these policies requires paying any kind of fee. Don't be fooled by journals and publishers that cynically spread this myth themselves or leave it uncorrected. You can help by correcting this falsehood wherever you see it. You can also help by working with hiring, promotion, tenure, and funding committees to care more about the quality of research than the journals in which it is published.

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#APCs #NelsonMemo #NIH #OpenAccess #OAintheUSA #PublicAccess #Repositories

The NIH Policy Holding Researchers β€œHostage”

An effort to make NIH-funded research immediately accessible to the public has led to disruption and financial strain for scientists already navigating a precarious funding environment. It also spotlights the power of corporate publishers.

Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs

Thanks to #SPARC (@sparc) for this new "Guide for Authors Complying with U.S. Federal Agency Public Access and Publisher Policies."
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/guide-for-authors-complying-with-policies/

Bottom line: Compliance with the US federal #OpenAccess policies is free of charge. Publishers who charge fed-funded authors a fee to make their work OA are charging to publish in their journals, not charging to comply with fed policy. You can publish elsewhere and avoid those fees.

#APCs #Funders #OAintheUSA #USA

Guide for Authors Complying with U.S. Federal Agency Public Access and Publisher Policies - SPARC

SPARC

The federal govt shutdown is halting or slowing operations at #OpenAccess #repositories like #PubMedCentral: "Because of a lapse in government funding, the information on this website may not be up to date, transactions submitted via the website may not be processed, and the agency may not be able to respond to inquiries until appropriations are enacted."
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

#GreenOA #OAintheUSA #USPol #USPolitics

PubMed Central (PMC)

PMC is a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM).

PubMed Central (PMC)

The #NIH is calling for public comments on its plan to cap the use of grant funds to pay #APCs. It seeks comments on five listed options and/or suggestions for other options.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-138.html

The comment deadline is September 15, 2025. The NIH plans to start implementing its APC-capping policy on January 1, 2026.

#Funding #Medicine #OAintheUSA

NOT-OD-25-138: Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs

NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Request for Information on Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs NOT-OD-25-138. NIH

1/ The new #NIH #OpenAccess policy takes effect today.
https://grants.nih.gov/policy-and-compliance/policy-topics/public-access

Here are a few notable points about the policy.

The NIH has had a mandatory OA policy since 2008. The new policy is a strengthened version that eliminates the permissible embargo. The policy now requires unembargoed or immediate OA, from the date of publication.
https://grants.nih.gov/faqs#/search/693/embargo

This strengthening was required by the #Biden-era #NelsonMemo from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (#OSTP).

Note that Trump has not revoked or weakened the Nelson Memo even though it came out of the Biden White House and uses #DEI language. Nor has he scuttled or weakened any agency policies drafted under its guidance.

That may be baffling. But part of the larger picture is that Trump's own OSTP in his first term drafted a memo similar to the Nelson Memo. It too would have strengthened the federal OA policies by eliminating the embargo.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/02/academic-publishing-market-trump-executive-order.html

There may be many reasons why he didn't sign the memo, including the fact that it wasn't finished until near the end of his term when he was caught in impeachment hearings.

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#Funders #Medicine #OAintheUSA #ScholComm

Public Access | Grants & Funding

@kfitz Do you accept #PublicDomain works by US government employees? About a million would need to be archived in some place #Unpaywall can find.
https://archive.org/details/@academic_public_domain

#OAintheUSA

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

10/ #Trump is doing damage on many fronts, not just the front of open and uncensored research. Are there projects to #crowdsource info on all of that damage? If so, the project on damage to research could be part of that larger project.

I welcome your thoughts.

#OAintheUSA #OpenAccess #OpenScience

1/ I'm doing what I can to track the actions and positions of the new #Trump admin on open and uncensored research. But it's far more than a one-person job. This is a post on what I'm doing β€” building up to a call to help find ways to #crowdsource the work.

#Censorship #DefendResearch #OAintheUSA, #OpenAccess #OpenScience #ScholComm #Takedowns #Universities

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