NIH Publisher Fee Cap Plan “Not Comprehensive Enough”

Some publishers charge authors more than $10,000 per article to make their research publicly accessible.

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Members of the public have until Sept. 15 to weigh in on the National Institutes of Health’s plan to curb how much taxpayer money goes to journals to publish some federally funded research.

The agency, which is the nation’s largest funder of biomedical research, wants to do that by capping—or potentially disallowing—the amount of money it gives to NIH-funded researchers who want to make their work publicly accessible by paying publishers article processing charges. A July 30 request for information memo outlined five potential options, which the NIH says are all aimed at balancing the “feasibility of providing research results with maximizing the use of t