Many federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all pave the way for the eventual confirmation. But on Thursday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) dropped a big one that seemed to take everyone by surprise. Starting in 2026, any scientific publication that receives federal funding will need to be openly accessible on the day it’s published.
The move has the potential to further shake up the scientific publishing industry, which has already adopted preprint archives, similar mandates from other funding organizations, and greatly expanded access to publications during the pandemic.
Aaron Schwartz died trying to make this happen.
Sometimes I come across publications while doing researching where only the abstract is public, but the content is blocked behind a paywall or privileged access portal. I’ll have to pay more attention in the future, but it does make me wonder how many of these paywalls are selling publications that were already paid for by public grants.
If they weren’t paid by our tax dollars, then I respect their copyrights, but when the research is funded by us, I feel we should be entitled to the results of our public investments.
Alfman,
This is a complex issue. At the core: someone has to pay for these services.
Given limited budgets of research projects, many teams avoid “open access” journals. You have to pay an upfront fee to be featured on that outlet. And, that money comes out of the budget that would otherwise go to a conference travel, a better computer, or any other resource you’d use on your research.
Yet, the publisher needs to employ editors, which costs money. Without editors, you don’t have a modern peer reviewed journal.
And… almost all groups are at least partially funded by the government (the alternative is industry, which usually get the “first dibs” on that research).
That makes the entire system very complicated.
(I am not saying all the fees are high prices are justified. Elsevier, for example has a profit margin of 31.3%: https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/publishing/elsevier-fact-sheet/ that is quite high)
sukru,
Let me play devil’s advocate. The public shouldn’t be entitled to anything they didn’t pay for. But research paid for with with public money should be publicly available to the standards required by the grants funding them and those grants should include public access to publication. If authors, editors and publishers can provide valued added content or services above and beyond what was already publicly funded, then they should have the right to sell those improvements. In other words *if* they add value, then the free market might consider paying for it. The elephant in the room is that the public might not be that interested in paying for after-market research paper improvements. Many will probably only want the research they’re already entitled to by virtue of having already paid for it via public money.
While it would be unfortunate for publishers if their value added work isn’t appreciated by the market, it is nevertheless quite logical that they deserve to be paid by the value they bring to the table and not simply earn royalties over works that the government paid to commission.
It’s not a complex issue whatsoever.
The content, results, review, and even the editing are all done by parties not employed by the journal/publisher.
When you submit a paper to a conference or journal, the selection process is usually done by volunteers working for the conference. These are the “peers” in the peer review process. If your paper is selected, the committee will give you a set of changes (in case they need to improve the final paper), which are the responsibility of the authors of the paper.
Once it goes to the proceedings/journal, you get feedback on the style and formatting of the paper in case you missed something. Usually the # of pages and style is set as a minimum requirement for the submitted papers to be even considered.
The journal basically just puts these papers together, and that is it. They don’t do much editing or anything. Their value added in the old days cam in terms of printing and distribution. But with electronic distribution, their value added is even more dubious.
It depends what you pay for and what the publication in question offers. But nothing is ever free from time and therefore cost.
I’ve worked in publishing and even those conference papers take days and days to organise and coordinate. Getting feedback from those peers. The feedback needs to be reviewed and edited. Then incorporated into proper systems and published online. Even online/digital publishing comes with hosting costs. Plus passed on costs like DOI and ISSN enrollment. That is why open access papers still have a cost associated with them to publish. (Open Access means free to read, not free to publish)
Thanks, that was a better explanation than mine.
Editors do real valuable work. I have not been one myself, but as an author, and occasional reviewer (peer), it was not hard to see the additional benefits they have on our papers.
Anyway, we will probably see more “open access” works, while at the same time, a possible declining quantity in the work output.
I didn’t say anything about cost, but rather added value. Specially given how almost the entirety of the labor, and all of the content, comes from the authors and reviewers, none of whom are employed by the publishing house.
Does the publisher have costs, sure. Do most journal/conference publishers provide enough value to justify the current copyright/ownership structures? I don’t think so.
This is great news from the OSTP. Horizon EU funding has required Open Access for years now, and in my opinion the world is better for it. The US is going a step further by requiring Gold OA (access from day 1) and it would be great if that pushes others to follow suit.
https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/docs/h2020-funding-guide/cross-cutting-issues/open-access-data-management/open-access_en.htm
The publishers still get a cut through the OA fees. Projects budget for these at the proposal stage, so it doesn’t necessarily mean cutting costs elsewhere.
The result is that all of us, not just academics, have access to research results, and this is a really good thing. As someone who moved from academia to a commercial employer a few years ago, losing access to journals was something I really noticed. It was quite painful.
As with everything there’s a flipside. Open Access publishing fees can be high; outside of what many individuals can afford (Elsevier’s fees go up to EUR9 900). That adds a barrier to peer-reviewed publication for individuals, but also even for academics who don’t have their own funded projects. So in spite of the Internet bringing down publishing and collaboration costs, it’s still not perfect.