The perennial debate over public access to federally funded research has often been framed as a stark trade-off: either taxpayers pay publishers for access, or the science remains locked away. That framing is now under direct challenge as the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) revises the government-wide grants rulebook. The proposed rewrite would make publication costs unallowable across nearly all federal agencies, presenting a clear opportunity to debunk the long-held assumption that publisher fees are a necessary component of public access.
A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on federal research publishing costs paints a stark picture: a $11 billion market dominated by a handful of commercial publishers who have turned a bipartisan public-access policy into a lucrative revenue stream through Article Processing Charges (APCs). These fees, which can exceed $12,000 per article, are projected to cost federal agencies and researchers billions more in the coming years. The GAO report treats these costs as unavoidable, concluding there is 'no practical way' for researchers to comply with public access mandates without incurring them.
But that conclusion is fundamentally flawed. The policy simply requires that articles reporting on taxpayer-funded research be made immediately available to the public by depositing a copy in a federally designated repository. Authors can satisfy this requirement at zero cost by following the existing guidance. APCs, in contrast, purchase a different product: a publisher-branded version of the article, often associated with perceived prestige. For some authors, that may be worth paying for, but it is not what the mandate demands, and publishers should not be allowed to conflate the two.
The APC model also bears little relation to the actual costs of publication. The largest academic publishers routinely report profit margins of 30-40 percent, far above the average S&P 500 company. These profits are effectively subsidized by public research funds, as APCs are often paid from federal grants. This pay-to-publish system incentivizes volume over quality, with predictable consequences. The GAO report documents paper mills churning out fraudulent submissions, editorial boards resigning over pressure to prioritize quantity, and one major publisher retracting over 11,000 articles after systemic fraud tied to its APC model.
It is time to end the false narrative that paying publishers is the only route to public access. The OMB can make this clarity binding by explicitly stating that depositing a manuscript in a repository at no cost fully satisfies the government's public access requirement, and by directing agencies to issue clear guidance on the no-cost deposit pathways already available. A rule that bars agencies from paying APCs but says nothing about what researchers should do instead would simply push the same confusion downstream.
The federal government's obligation is not to protect commercial publishers or their margins. It is to ensure that the public, having already paid for research once through taxes, is not asked to pay again to read it. As Heather Joseph, executive director of SPARC, argues, those with influence over federal science funding must see this for what it is and stop playing along. The OMB's rewrite offers a pivotal moment to set the record straight.
This move aligns with broader efforts to curb wasteful government spending and could have significant implications for the future of research dissemination. It also touches on the limits of executive authority in shaping policy. The decision now rests with OMB to make the no-cost route explicit and binding.
