According to science.org, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will announce new limits next year on how much of its grant money can be used to pay open-access publishing fees, known as article-processing charges (APCs). The agency’s July 30th request for comment cited fees as high as $12,690 per paper at Nature as a reason to act, proposing caps between $2,000 and $6,000. The move has sparked intense debate, with over 900 public comments released last week from researchers, institutions, and publishers. Many scientists, like radiologist Geoffrey Young, call the plan “well-intentioned, but misguided,” arguing it fails to tackle the root problems in publishing and could unfairly block researchers from prestigious journals. The NIH says it will review all feedback, with other options still on the table, including capping APCs at 0.8% of a grant’s direct costs or scrapping funding for them entirely in favor of preprints.
A Rock and a Hard Place
Here’s the thing: researchers are stuck. The NIH has a “zero-embargo” mandate requiring publicly funded work to be free to read upon publication, which often means paying a gold open-access fee. But now the same agency wants to limit what they can pay. As one immunology researcher put it, it’s an “impossible position.” You can read the official NIH request for information to see the dilemma laid out. And it’s not just theoretical. A 2022 AAAS survey found many grantees already skip buying lab equipment or dip into personal savings to cover these costs. So the NIH sees a leak in the budget and is putting a finger in the dam. But is the dam itself the problem?
Publishers Push Back
Unsurprisingly, the big commercial publishers—Elsevier, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis—aren’t fans. Their lengthy comments argue that APCs pay for vital services: peer review coordination, editing, fraud detection. Springer Nature says its pricing “reflects the true cost of publishing and the value we add.” But critics like information scientist Stefanie Haustein aren’t buying it. She calls these companies “exploitative,” and her team’s recent preprint on arXiv notes Elsevier’s profit margin has exceeded 37% for five years straight. That’s a stunning number. Basically, billions in federal research dollars are flowing to private shareholders. And let’s be honest, with high-profile fraud cases still slipping through, what exactly are we paying for? Prestige, mostly. It’s a brand tax.
The Unintended Consequences
This is where the proposal gets really messy. A cap might sound good, but the devil’s in the details. Haustein’s analysis shows a huge gap between the proposed caps and what top journals actually charge. So what happens? Senior scientists at wealthy institutions will find other money. Early-career researchers won’t. They’ll be forced into lower-tier journals, which can torpedo grants and promotions. The cap could also become a price floor, pushing cheaper journals to raise rates. And the big publishers? They’ll just work around it. Haustein suggests they’ll push more “transformative agreements” with universities—big bundled deals that hide the true cost. The NIH’s policy might actually increase market concentration, giving the giants more power. You can see the full spectrum of fears in the compiled public comments.
A Cultural Problem, Not a Budget One
I think the most damning comments point to the real issue: academic culture. As one biologist noted, researchers are *required* to publish in high-impact journals for tenure and promotion. The NIH fuels that system by valuing publication records. So they’re trying to fix a symptom they helped create. Until the incentives change—until hiring and grants committees stop fetishizing journal brands—any financial fix is just a band-aid. Some radical ideas are floating, like the Gates Foundation model of only funding preprints. But bypassing peer review entirely brings its own nightmares. Others, like the AAAS in its detailed response, advocate for more nuanced, percentage-based caps. It’s a complex ecosystem, and a blunt cap is a blunt instrument. The NIH has to decide: is it just managing its budget, or is it willing to fight for systemic change? Right now, it looks like they’re choosing the easier, and potentially more damaging, path.
