Back in July, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced that the agency would establish new policies for allowable publishing costs in NIH grants. Bhattacharya argued that too much grant money is going to publishing costs—such as article processing charges (APCs)—and not enough to the actual research activities such funds are intended to cover. As such, he believes that the financial burden placed on the public, to not only fund research via tax dollars but also to fund access to that research (e.g., in open access journals), is too great. Starting January 1, 2026, NIH will limit the publishing costs researchers can cover with their grant money—but exactly how is still in question.
Following this announcement, NIH issued a request for information (RFI) on “Maximizing Research Funds by Limiting Allowable Publishing Costs,” offering five options to keep publishing costs, including APCs, paid by NIH “reasonable.” The agency asked all interested individuals and communities—including researchers, research institutions, scientific societies, and publishers—to weigh in on these options and offer additional considerations for developing this new policy. With input from our scientific societies, FABBS responded to this request on September 15.
The RFI includes the following possible options for limiting publishing costs:
- Disallow all publication costs.
- Set a limit on allowable costs per publication (e.g., $2,000 per publication).
- Set a limit on allowable costs per publication and allow a higher amount to be paid when peer reviewers are compensated.
- Set a limit on the total amount of an award that can be spent on publication costs.
- Set a limit on both the per publication cost and the total amount of an award that can be spent on publications.
In our comments, FABBS argued that none of the five options presented would adequately achieve the goal of balancing flexibility in providing research results with maximizing the use of taxpayer funds to support research. We firmly rejected Option 1, considering NIH’s new public access policy—which went into effect on July 1 instead of on December 31, as originally scheduled, giving researchers less time to prepare for the change—and the increased costs to the researcher of open access publishing. We also noted that this option would be especially detrimental to non-profit journals, such as those owned by scientific societies.
Although FABBS remains open to the other four options—seeing potential in some combination of them—we questioned the processes for determining the “reasonable” allowable costs caps presented in this notice. FABBS encouraged NIH to undertake a more comprehensive, nuanced evaluation of APCs and budget requests before settling on any specific numbers. For example, NIH determined that the average reported APC in the U.S. is $2,176.84 and the median reported APC is $2,040.00, and therefore settled on a per publication cost limit of $2,000. However, this approach fails to account for known variations in APCs—e.g., APCs for STEM journals are higher than those for social science journals—and could lead to a limit that is too small for some disciplines yet too large for others.
FABBS also raised concerns about potential unintended consequences of the polices proposed by NIH and of allowable publishing costs limits more broadly. For example,
- Publishers might increase acceptance rates to make up the difference caused by lower APCs.
- If publishers keep their APCs high even in the face of an NIH cap on allowable publication costs, this could lead to the concentration of the work of better-resourced scientists in the most prestigious (and expensive) journals.
- In setting a per-publication cost limit, the price cap might become the price floor, as previously lower-cost journals increase their APCs to match the cap.
NIH has not indicated when it will announce a final policy. FABBS will continue to monitor related developments.
