Reminder: you do not need to pay APCs to comply with federal public access policies. The NIH, for example, always has a free option available to researchers:
THIS! Phie Jacobs and Kathryn Palmer both miss this important detail in their respective pieces (and that's probably because for-profit publishers have successfully owned the counter-messaging here). There is no prohibition on publishing behind a paywall provided that you (the researcher) submit your author accepted manuscript to PubMedCentral. You do not need to pay any APCs to comply with federal agency public access policies, ever. Moreover, as I conveyed in my response to the RFI - NIH needs to do a better job communicating this fact, making it easier for researchers to submit (by interoperating with institutional/library/community repositories), and proactively asserting its federal purpose license.
Great reporting by Phie Jacobs in Science Magazine on the NIH APC RFI response to comments with thoughts from Stefanie Haustein :
I've started a look-back for my annual year in review and I came across a nice surprise in finding this excellent summary of my closing keynote at CERN from the University of Cape Town:
https://uct.ac.za/eresearch/articles/2025-10-27-uct-eresearch-open-science-fair-2025
"Marcum’s address underscored the importance of genuine human collaboration amid the growing emphasis on artificial intelligence, advocating for a scientific community united in shared goals and mutual support to co-create the future of open science. "
In case it helps you with your own analysis, I made the comments submitted in response to the NIH Office of Science Policy's RFI on Article Processing Charges openly accessible in three machine-readable formats here:
The NIH has released the compiled comments on the APC RFI :
"Washington, DC– Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination."
https://www.imls.gov/news/statement-agencys-reinstatement-terminated-imls-grants
Statement of Agency’s Reinstatement of Terminated IMLS Grants Washington, DC– Upon further review, the Institute of Museum and Library Services has reinstated all federal grants. This action supersedes any prior notices which may have been received related to grant termination.
Tomorrow House Oversight will mark up the Information Quality Assurance Act, which will codify many aspects of OMB information quality policy. This is a bipartisan bill that I have worked very hard on for years. With agencies misinterpreting or misapplying their obligations on information quality - including the appropriate use of scientific information - it's more important than ever to get this legislation done!!
https://oversight.house.gov/markup/full-committee-business-meeting-82/
