You may have recently heard the NIH Director speak about the importance of academic freedom in scientific discovery. In short, NIH defines academic freedom as the ability to engage in open, rigorous discourse to stress test ideas, challenge the status quo, and shape the most impactful path forward.
Now, I might be biased – but I believe that nowhere is academic freedom more vital than in the policymaking process. For a policy to have its intended impact – with minimized unintended consequences – policymakers must rigorously debate the merits of the evidence, evolving societal and ethical views, the practicalities of implementation, etc. Public debate is the cornerstone of sound policy.
For these reasons, I’m extremely proud to say NIH continues to value public debate around our newest policy proposal regarding maximizing research funds by limiting allowable publication costs.
Let’s start with the basics: To get science into the hands of other scientists, practitioners, and the public, we rely on a system of dissemination – namely, peer-reviewed publication. Ensuring that published research is rigorous, reliable, and compliant with federal policy requirements comes at a cost. Historically, NIH has supported these costs as part of its mission to advance science.
On the flip side, we often hear a valid concern: the public pays for everything – from research infrastructure to the research project, to the data sharing, to the publication – and ultimately, for access to any resulting product. This raises a fundamental question:
What is a reasonable cost for publication?
It is increasingly clear that some current practices potentially divert resources, and the NIH budget is a zero-sum game. What is the appropriate tradeoff between a publication cost and seeding the next groundbreaking discovery or promising early-career investigator? In asking ourselves this question, our policy goals remain consistent:
- Incentivize rigorous, unbiased scientific review
- Maximize the impact of NIH research dollars to support transformative discoveries
To make a truly fair system, we need your help to figure this out. Share your thoughts, concerns, or ideas on how we can strike the right balance between dissemination, fiscal responsibility, and scientific integrity. Submit your comments here by September 15, 2025: https://osp.od.nih.gov/comment-form-maximizing-research-funds-by-limiting-allowable-publishing-costs/
Under the journal subscription system, very few people do not have access to scientific research publications. Interlibrary loan works, for public as well as university libraries.
Librarians support open access publishing because it moves costs from the library budget to the faculty and students.
There are quality differences between peer-reviewed and edited papers and those on “archives” or pre-publication papers in PubMed.
It will be difficult to define what level of editing, formatting, and maintaining data bases of published papers should be paid for. Will the government simply replace the publication industry?
Since one stated goal is to promote research results, it is ironic that the journals that emphasize supporting getting information to journalists, such as Nature and Science, have the resulting high publication charges that the proposed policy will limit.