Last August, the White House announced that federally funded research should be made freely available to the public without delay. A new policy will come into effect at the end of 2025, which replaces the current policy allowing a 12-month embargo for open-access publication. Colleges might help researchers by covering their open-access article processing charges and reconsidering the importance of journal impact factors in the promotion process. Publishers could provide more transparent information about journal operating costs and offer a broader range of open-access publishing options. Funding agencies could raise grant budgets to offset open-access publishing’s anticipated higher costs, scrutinize publication costs in researcher’s proposed budgets, and support non-profit open-access journals and platforms with minimal or no fees. The head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Alondra Nelson, believes that open-access publishing will help save lives, provide policymakers with critical tools, and drive more equitable outcomes across all sectors of society.
New Recommendations for Encouraging Open-Access Publishing.
In 2022, the White House announced that research based on federally funded studies must be made freely available to the public without an embargo. The new requirement, which updates an existing policy that allowed a 12-month embargo for making research freely available, will take effect by the end of 2025. While some celebrated the decision, others questioned the high cost to researchers who publish open access.
A recently published paper in the Journal of Science Policy and Government provides recommendations for colleges, publishers, and funding agencies interested in supporting open access moving forward. The authors suggest several measures that institutions could take, such as colleges canceling subscriptions with major publishers in favor of paying for researchers’ open-access article processing charges. They also propose that colleges “reevaluate the weight that journal impact factor carries in the tenure and promotion review process,” as there is no evidence correlating journal impact factor with research quality. This change would encourage researchers to publish in newer, open-access journals instead of more established, expensive, and higher impact journals.
Publishers, according to the paper, should be more transparent about journal operating costs and how article processing charges are used. They could also offer a wider range of open-access publishing options to support authors and researchers.
Funding agencies could offset the expected higher costs of open-access publishing by increasing grant budgets, although this would be a temporary, albeit expensive measure. Alternatively, they could increase their scrutiny of publication costs in researchers’ proposed budgets and openly endorse non-profit open-access journals and platforms with minimal or no fees for researchers.
While the new policy presents hurdles for colleges, publishers, and funding agencies, the authors of the study expect that it will ultimately benefit society.
Benefits of Open-Access Publishing
Last August, the White House announced that research based on federally funded studies must be made freely available to the public without an embargo. This move will take effect by the end of 2025. According to Alondra Nelson, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, open-access publishing will save lives, provide policymakers with critical tools, and drive more equitable outcomes across every sector of society. The American public funds tens of billions of dollars of cutting-edge research annually, and there should be no delay or barrier between the American public and the returns on their investments in research.
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