Sometime next year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will announce new limits on how much funding grantees can spend on publication fees to make their articles open access, or free to read. But public comments released last week from more than 900 researchers, academic institutions, and publishers reveal deep concerns about a proposal.

In its 30 July, 2025 request for public comment, NIH wrote that paying high APCs – up to $12,690 per paper, at Nature – lessens the funds available for research activities. But many respondents say the proposed APC caps, which range from $2000 to $6000, fail to address deeper problems in the scientific publishing industry and could inequitably block some researchers from publishing in prestigious journals, potentially hurting their chance of being hired or winning a grant or promotion.

APCs are meant to make up for subscription revenue when research is made open access. But universities generally pay for journal subscriptions, whereas APCs often come out of researchers’ own budgets. Many grantees already forgo purchasing lab materials or equipment or use their own personal funds to pay the fees, according to a 2022 survey by AAAS, which publishes Science.

Source https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-s-proposed-caps-open-access-publishing-fees-roil-scientific-community

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