{"id":235403,"date":"2025-12-16T08:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/235403\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T08:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T08:22:07","slug":"research-groups-oppose-capping-nih-funding-of-publisher-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/235403\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Groups Oppose Capping NIH Funding of Publisher Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Institutes of Health requested public comments earlier this year on its proposals<\/a> to reduce how much of its grant money researchers can use to pay scientific journals to publish their work. The agency released the feedback this month, showing that multiple major research advocacy groups and other organizations say its ideas are misguided.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur organizations strongly urge NIH to explore other mechanisms for addressing concerns around publication costs\u2014approaches that recognize that neither institutions nor individual investigators have control over publication costs,\u201d read a joint comment from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and COGR. The groups said \u201cthese costs are controlled entirely by publishers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AAU is a prestigious coalition of top research institutions. COGR, which only goes by its acronym, is an organization that advocates for researchers and universities on the federal level. The quartet of groups called the agency\u2019s proposed caps on article processing charges (APCs) \u201carbitrary\u201d and asked the NIH\u2014if it does move ahead with policy changes\u2014to allow waivers and give universities at least a year for implementation to adjust budgets and negotiate with publishers.<\/p>\n

The NIH accepted comments on the proposed caps from July 30 to Sept. 15, and more than 900 researchers, associations, publishers, universities and others weighed in. Science reported earlier<\/a> on the bevy of comments. The changes\u2014which were previously planned to take effect early next year, though NIH hasn\u2019t released a specific timeline\u2014could pressure the $19\u00a0billion for-profit scholarly publishing industry to lower fees.<\/p>\n

The industry is dominated by a small group of publishers who benefit from the often unpaid work of scholars who peer review articles submitted by other researchers, who themselves also aren\u2019t paid by publishers but by their institutions, federal funding agencies such as NIH and other sources.<\/p>\n

One of NIH\u2019s five proposals this summer<\/a> was to no longer fund any publication costs. Another, less far-reaching, proposal was to cap how much of a grant could be spent on these expenses to 0.8\u00a0percent of the direct costs over the length of the award or $20,000, whichever is greater.<\/p>\n

But the four organizations said in their public comment that this too underestimates \u201cthe costs that investigators are likely to face,\u201d particularly because NIH this year began requiring open access publishing of the research it funds\u2014with no more year-long embargo period allowed. Journals generally charge significantly more to publish scientists\u2019 research open access, where researchers and the public don\u2019t have to pay to read the article. The prestigious journal Nature, which is owned by Springer, charges authors $12,690<\/a> to allow open access to a single article.<\/p>\n

The four organizations wrote that the average NIH award last year was around $620,000, and each award produced seven publications on average. \u201cWith the average APC costs for journals where NIH-funded researchers publish approaching $4,000, investigators routinely spend nearly $28,000 on APCs over the duration of a grant, a percentage that is closer to 4.3\u00a0percent than 0.8\u00a0percent of the award,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

The quartet added that capping how much of a grant can be spent on publication fees could particularly harm less-wealthy institutions and early-career researchers. The groups warned that the limits could drive some researchers to publish in less-expensive journals\u2014not the best ones to disseminate their findings\u2014and even to submit to \u201cjournals that forgo peer review, which is particularly dangerous for biomedical and health research.\u201d<\/p>\n

The American Psychological Association, a nonprofit that says it has \u201c173,000 members and affiliates\u201d and also operates as a publisher, criticized the proposals in its own comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cFaced with revenue constraints, some publishers may adjust their business models to prioritize volume over quality, leading to the publication of more articles with less rigorous review,\u201d wrote Katherine B. McGuire, APA\u2019s chief advocacy officer. McGuire also said the APA expects \u201cjournals currently charging below a potential cap would have a strong incentive to raise their prices to that new ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGuire further said the proposals could actually lead to more consolidation and more power for the for-profit publishers at the expense of nonprofits because \u201clarge commercial publishers are better positioned to absorb lower APC fees through broad \u2018read-and-publish\u2019 transformative agreements with institutions.\u201d She also echoed the other organizations\u2019 concern that the caps could \u201charm early-career researchers and those at less-resourced institutions,\u201d given that \u201cwell-established researchers might have access to non-NIH funds to publish in journals that charge more than the cap allows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus should be on ensuring grant funds are sufficient to cover the costs of rigorous peer review and high-quality publication, rather than capping those costs,\u201d McGuire said.<\/p>\n

Representatives of the Big Ten Academic Alliance\u2019s research libraries, who said their universities produce about 15\u00a0percent of research publications in the U.S., said in a comment, \u201cWe believe that none of the options proposed\u201d will \u201ceffectively achieve our shared goals.\u201d They wrote that APCs \u201cdo not reflect the actual costs of publishing, but rather what the market will bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAuthors are constrained by a system that rewards prestige publishing and is exploited by monopolistic profit-driven publishers,\u201d they wrote. \u201cThe options proposed in this [request for information] that limit payments to publishers will shift costs to other areas of the taxpayer-funded research enterprise, and will likely create a higher \u2018floor\u2019 for APCs rather than limiting costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like the APA, the Big Ten research libraries expressed concern that \u201ccaps on APCs may incentivize publishers to increase article volume by lowering editorial standards.\u201d Ultimately, they said, \u201cprofit-driven publishers can, and do, find any rationale for increasing publishing fees. Without accurate and transparent data on the true costs of publishing, we should not look for explanations for increasing fees beyond meeting shareholder expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an email, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Resources Department, which includes the NIH, said the \u201crobust response\u201d to the request for public comments \u201cunderscores the significance of this issue for the research community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNIH is currently undertaking a thorough and deliberate review of all submitted feedback as we continue to shape the policy,\u201d the spokesperson wrote. \u201cBecause we remain in an active evaluation and development phase, we are not yet in a position to indicate a preferred policy option or provide a definitive implementation timeline.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Institutes of Health requested public comments earlier this year on its proposals to reduce how much…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[296,2597,18,3124,30828,19,17,227,5,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-235403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-career","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-events","12":"tag-higher","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jobs","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115728281989071653","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}