Research Groups Oppose Capping NIH Funding of Publisher Fees

The National Institutes of Health requested public comments earlier this year on its proposals to reduce how much of its grant money researchers can use to pay scientific journals to publish their work. The agency released the feedback this month, showing that multiple major research advocacy groups and other organizations say its ideas are misguided.

“Our organizations strongly urge NIH to explore other mechanisms for addressing concerns around publication costs—approaches that recognize that neither institutions nor individual investigators have control over publication costs,” read a joint comment from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and COGR. The groups said “these costs are controlled entirely by publishers.”

The AAU is a prestigious coalition of top research institutions. COGR, which only goes by its acronym, is an organization that advocates for researchers and universities on the federal level. The quartet of groups called the agency’s proposed caps on article processing charges (APCs) “arbitrary” and asked the NIH—if it does move ahead with policy changes—to allow waivers and give universities at least a year for implementation to adjust budgets and negotiate with publishers.

The NIH accepted comments on the proposed caps from July 30 to Sept. 15, and more than 900 researchers, associations, publishers, universities and others weighed in. Science reported earlier on the bevy of comments. The changes—which were previously planned to take effect early next year, though NIH hasn’t released a specific timeline—could pressure the $19 billion for-profit scholarly publishing industry to lower fees.

The industry is dominated by a small group of publishers who benefit from the often unpaid work of scholars who peer review articles submitted by other researchers, who themselves also aren’t paid by publishers but by their institutions, federal funding agencies such as NIH and other sources.

One of NIH’s five proposals this summer was to no longer fund any publication costs. Another, less far-reaching, proposal was to cap how much of a grant could be spent on these expenses to 0.8 percent of the direct costs over the length of the award or $20,000, whichever is greater.

But the four organizations said in their public comment that this too underestimates “the costs that investigators are likely to face,” particularly because NIH this year began requiring open access publishing of the research it funds—with no more year-long embargo period allowed. Journals generally charge significantly more to publish scientists’ research open access, where researchers and the public don’t have to pay to read the article. The prestigious journal Nature, which is owned by Springer, charges authors $12,690 to allow open access to a single article.

The four organizations wrote that the average NIH award last year was around $620,000, and each award produced seven publications on average. “With the average APC costs for journals where NIH-funded researchers publish approaching $4,000, investigators routinely spend nearly $28,000 on APCs over the duration of a grant, a percentage that is closer to 4.3 percent than 0.8 percent of the award,” they wrote.

The quartet added that capping how much of a grant can be spent on publication fees could particularly harm less-wealthy institutions and early-career researchers. The groups warned that the limits could drive some researchers to publish in less-expensive journals—not the best ones to disseminate their findings—and even to submit to “journals that forgo peer review, which is particularly dangerous for biomedical and health research.”

The American Psychological Association, a nonprofit that says it has “173,000 members and affiliates” and also operates as a publisher, criticized the proposals in its own comment.

“Faced with revenue constraints, some publishers may adjust their business models to prioritize volume over quality, leading to the publication of more articles with less rigorous review,” wrote Katherine B. McGuire, APA’s chief advocacy officer. McGuire also said the APA expects “journals currently charging below a potential cap would have a strong incentive to raise their prices to that new ceiling.”

McGuire further said the proposals could actually lead to more consolidation and more power for the for-profit publishers at the expense of nonprofits because “large commercial publishers are better positioned to absorb lower APC fees through broad ‘read-and-publish’ transformative agreements with institutions.” She also echoed the other organizations’ concern that the caps could “harm early-career researchers and those at less-resourced institutions,” given that “well-established researchers might have access to non-NIH funds to publish in journals that charge more than the cap allows.”

“The focus should be on ensuring grant funds are sufficient to cover the costs of rigorous peer review and high-quality publication, rather than capping those costs,” McGuire said.

Representatives of the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s research libraries, who said their universities produce about 15 percent of research publications in the U.S., said in a comment, “We believe that none of the options proposed” will “effectively achieve our shared goals.” They wrote that APCs “do not reflect the actual costs of publishing, but rather what the market will bear.”

“Authors are constrained by a system that rewards prestige publishing and is exploited by monopolistic profit-driven publishers,” they wrote. “The options proposed in this [request for information] that limit payments to publishers will shift costs to other areas of the taxpayer-funded research enterprise, and will likely create a higher ‘floor’ for APCs rather than limiting costs.”

Like the APA, the Big Ten research libraries expressed concern that “caps on APCs may incentivize publishers to increase article volume by lowering editorial standards.” Ultimately, they said, “profit-driven publishers can, and do, find any rationale for increasing publishing fees. Without accurate and transparent data on the true costs of publishing, we should not look for explanations for increasing fees beyond meeting shareholder expectations.”

In an email, a spokesperson for the Health and Human Resources Department, which includes the NIH, said the “robust response” to the request for public comments “underscores the significance of this issue for the research community.”

“NIH is currently undertaking a thorough and deliberate review of all submitted feedback as we continue to shape the policy,” the spokesperson wrote. “Because we remain in an active evaluation and development phase, we are not yet in a position to indicate a preferred policy option or provide a definitive implementation timeline.”