#apcs — Public Fediverse posts

Lothar Nunnenmacher from @Lib4RI discusses the development of their unified search tool that integrates diverse data sources, including DOAJ #metadata, to help researchers navigate complex #OA publishing options #libraries #DiamondOA #APCs
▶️ Read more here https://blog.doaj.org/2026/07/02/why-accurate-doaj-metadata-matters-insights-from-lib4ri/

Watching with interest:

"Federal lawsuit accuses four major publishers of extorting article processing charges."
https://retractionwatch.com/2026/07/31/federal-lawsuit-major-publishers-article-processing-charges-false-claims-act/

"A lawsuit filed under the U.S. False Claims Act accuses four major publishers of perpetrating a decade-long scheme to defraud the government by charging exorbitant #APCs. The case…claims Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Informa [Taylor & Francis] forced U.S. research institutions to submit false claims to the government for reimbursement through article fees up to 10 times the cost of processing the articles."

#Litigation #Publishers #ScholComm #USLaw

@ombialik
You're right that the OA journals in which many people want to publish charge #APCs. That depends on many factors, like the person's field and the incentives created by the person's institution (e.g. promotion and tenure committee).

But it's still true that most OA journals do not charge APCs.

It's easy to speak precisely, and recommend preprints without leaving the false impression that all or most OA journals charge APCs.

@ombialik
I completely support the message about preprints.

But please don't perpetuate the myth that all or even most #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs. Most do not charge APCs (#DiamondOA). And OA repositories never charge APCs (#GreenOA).

A new study finds that by 2023, APC-based #OpenAccess articles had surpassed paywalled subscription articles in #retractions.
https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.763

The study does not blame OA as such. It blames the APC business model.

"These findings raise concerns about APC‑based publishing models that directly link publisher revenue to publication volume, creating structural tensions for editorial oversight and quality control."

#APCs #Incentives

But note this nuance. While most #OpenAccess journals (today 62%) charge no APCs, most articles published in OA journals (today 72%) are published in APC-based OA journals.

Thanks to the research of @waltcrawford for the second number. See p. 6.
https://waltcrawford.name/goa26.pdf

#APCs, #DiamondOA, #GoldOA, #ScholComm

As of today, the Directory of Open Access Journals (#DOAJ @DOAJ) lists 23,131 peer-reviewed #OpenAccess journals, of which 14,347 charge no #APCs. Hence, 62% of these OA journals are no-fee or #DiamondOA.
http://www.doaj.org/

You can get the latest raw numbers any time you want on the DOAJ front page, and the percentage is an easy calculation. Please correct people who say or assume that all or even most OA journals charge APCs. Most do not.

#ScholComm

2/ Three highlights:

* In general, with few exceptions, funders could not pay #APCs. § 200.461. (This decides the question still under consideration at the #NIH, and applies the answer to NIH and all other covered agencies.)

* Grants could be terminated "mid-award" for "discretionary reasons" including decisions by political appointees that the grants no longer serve agency priorities. § 200.340.

* Grants "must, where applicable, demonstrably advance the President's policy priorities." They must not encourage racial preferences or illegal immigration, deny that sex is binary, or promote "anti-American values". When multiple grant applications are equally strong, "preference…should be given to institutions with lower indirect cost rates." Grantees must commit to follow existing guidance on #GoldStandardScience. "Senior [political] appointees…must not ministerially ratify or routinely defer to the recommendations of others [like peer reviewers], but must instead use their independent judgment when evaluating Federal award proposals." § 200.205.

#DefendResearch #Funding #Trump #TrumpVResearch #USPol #USPolitics

Please don't overfeed your armored transports, it's not healthy for them 😭

https://piefed.social/c/noncredibledefense/p/2088261/please-don-t-overfeed-your-armored-transports-it-s-not-healthy-for-them

Ahhhhh I'm AbrOOOMsING!

https://piefed.social/c/noncredibledefense/p/2087673/ahhhhh-i-m-abrooomsing

Update. Also see the excellent #SPARC response to the #GAO report.
https://sparcopen.org/news/2026/sparc-statement-on-gao-report-gao-26-107738-federal-research-publishing-costs-may-2026/

"We urge Congress and federal agencies to:
1. Distinguish public access from pay-to-publish…
2. Recognize that pay-to-publish doesn’t just cost the government and taxpayers more; it compromises the science it purports to support…
3. Decline to treat current market conditions as fixed…."

#APCs #OpenAccess #ScholComm #USPol #USPolitics

The US Government Accountability Office (#GAO) just reviewed the #OpenAccess policies at nine federal agencies.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-26-107738

A few highlights:

* Among other things, GAO looked for compliance with the #NelsonMemo. This is further evidence that the #Trump admin supports the memo.

* It encourages #NSF and #USDA to go further to ensure #reuse rights. (That would be good.) But it assumes that the other agencies are already doing enough to ensure reuse rights. (I can't agree with this.)

* It praises #NIH for taking steps to reduce money spent on grantee #APCs, and encourages other agencies to follow the NIH lead on this.

* In a few places it leaves the false impression (1) that all OA journals charge APCs and (2) that all publishers are responding the federal policies by charging APCs to publish fed-funded research.

#PublicAccess #ScholComm #USPol #USPolitics

"The Age of APCs: Corresponding Author Approaches to Article Processing Charges and Open Access"
https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.20329
#OpenAccess #APCs

Update. Another article made it through peer review (at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons) leading with two false generalizations, that (all or most) #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs and that (all or most) paid APCs are paid by authors.
https://journals.lww.com/jaaos/abstract/9900/the_open_versus_closed_access_publication.1671.aspx
(#paywalled)

Most OA journals are #DiamondOA and charge no APCs.
http://www.doaj.org/

Most paid APCs are paid by funders or employers, not by authors out of pocket. (Footnote: The evidence is clearer for the global north than the global south.)
https://suber.pubpub.org/pub/j1jk6hu9

On the plus side, the article reports that in field of orthopaedic surgery, OA articles have higher citation counts and altmetric scores than non-OA articles.

#Medicine #OACA #OpenAccessCitationAdvantage

Update. The passage in the #Trump budget criticizing expensive #subscriptions and #APCs (previous post, this thread) triggered a debate in the House of Representatives.

"US lawmakers intensify scrutiny of scientific-publishing practices."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01251-y

"From ‘paper mills’ that sell authorships on fake or low-quality research papers to the costs associated with open-access publishing, US lawmakers are paying increasing attention to widely debated issues in scientific publishing. In a rare show of unity, members of the US House of Representatives from both sides of the political aisle agreed at a hearing that these issues deserve more attention from government — but there was less unity on what the solutions should be."

#OpenAccess #Publishing #ScholComm

Update. Here's the key passage from the new #Trump budget proposing a "Government-Wide Prohibition on Publishing and Subscription Fees." See p. 17.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/budget_fy2027.pdf

"The Budget ends the diversion of research dollars to high priced publishers across the Government. The Budget prohibits the use of Federal funds for expensive subscriptions to academic journals and prohibitively high publishing costs unless required by Federal statute or approved in advance by a Federal agency. Research funded by taxpayers should be publicly accessible; yet many publications charge the Government to both publish and to access the same research study. There are numerous low-cost outlets to make federally-funded research publicly available."

h/t Jim O'Donnell

#APCs #DoubleDipping #OpenAccess #Publishing #ScholComm #Subscriptions

#CancerResearchUK will stop paying #APCs for funded researchers. Good. Unfortunately its announcement is marred by false assertions and assumptions about #OpenAccess. news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/w... I say more on Mastodon. fediscience.org/@petersuber/...

Why we won’t be funding open a...

#CancerResearchUK will stop paying #APCs for funded researchers.
https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2026/04/01/why-we-wont-be-funding-open-access-publishing-any-more/

PS. So far, so good. There are strong reasons to move away from APCs. For a summary, see Recommendation 3 of the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary statement in 2022. (Disclosure: I was the lead author.)
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/#rec-3

Unfortunately the Cancer Research UK announcement is marred by several false assertions and assumptions about #OpenAccess.

* Its narrow decision is to stop funding APCs, but its headline is that it will stop funding OA publishing as such. It leaves the distinct false impression that all OA journals charge APCs.

* Deep in the text it says that OA "hasn't worked. At least not in its current form." That looks like a recognition that not all OA depends on APCs. But it isn't explicit and didn't prevent careless language elsewhere in the statement.

* It never acknowledges that no-APC OA (#DiamondOA) journals exist, let alone that they constitute the majority of OA journals.

* It does acknowledge the existence of no-APC OA through repositories, or #GreenOA. But it falsely suggests that green OA must be embargoed. Just to give one notable set of counter-examples, all the federal OA policies in the US require unembargoed green OA.

#ScholComm

@johanrooryck.bsky.social just wrote an excellent reply to a range of objections and misunderstandings about #DiamondOA. doi.org/10.58079/15yxa #APCs #OpenAccess #ScholComm

Diamond OA, boutique or bazaar...

#JohanRooryck (@johanrooryck) just wrote an excellent reply to a range of objections and misunderstandings about #DiamondOA.
https://thd.hypotheses.org/560

#APCs #OpenAccess #ScholComm

🌐Christof Schöch, University of Trier, details how the #DOAJ journal #dataset is used to teach #Python programming for the Machine Learning in a Digital Humanities Master's program @christof

#PythonProgramming #APCs #DataClassiication #DataCleaning #MachineLearning
🔗 https://blog.doaj.org/2026/03/30/teaching-python-programming-with-doajs-journal-dataset/

Update. Here's an unrefereed letter to the editor protesting -- with justice -- that "top-ranked scientific publications [could] become the preserve of 'rich' groups." But it relies on the false assumption that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs. Hence, it doesn't even mention #DiamondOA solutions to this problem.
https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mbio.03659-25

Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #Elsevier) with the false claim that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs. www.journalofsurgicalresearch.com/article/S002... #ScholComm

Update. Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #Elsevier) with the false claim that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs.
https://www.journalofsurgicalresearch.com/article/S0022-4804(26)00045-4/abstract

I only have access to the abstract, not the full text. If I learn that the article acknowledges that no-APC OA (#DiamondOA) journals exist, and even outnumber APC-based OA journals, then I'll correct this post. But I'll still criticize the authors and editors for publishing a false claim in the abstract, namely, "Open access (OA) publishing…requires article processing charges (APCs)."

Today is the 24th birthday of the Budapest Open Access Initiative.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/

Best known for catalyzing the #OpenAccess movement in 2002, the BOAI has been continuously active and formed a nonprofit organization just last year.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/news/boai-transitioning-to-organization-to-support-the-development-of-equitable-open-access/

See the org's progress report on its first year.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/news/boai-celebrates-anniversary-and-reflects-on-progress-of-first-year-as-an-organization/

The latest version of the BOAI recommendations is its 20th anniversary statement.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/

In contrast to the earlier BOAI statements, which made many recommendations, the 20th anniversary statement deliberately focuses on a small number of top priorities:

1. Adopting #OpenInfrastructure
2. Reforming #ResearchAssessment
3. Moving away from #APCs
4. Moving away from #ReadAndPublish agreements.

I'm proud of my contributions to #BOAI (2002), #BOAI10 (2012), and #BOAI20 (2022), and honored to serve on the org steering committee.

Happy #ValentinesDay to all who work for #OpenAccess worldwide.

Update. Here's another piece critical of #APCs (so far, so good), and reviewing other people's criticisms of APCs (even better). Yet it makes the wholly false assertion that all #OpenAccess journals charge APCs. ("In open access, instead of readers having to pay, the paper’s authors cover the expenses of publication.") It says this even though it also summarizes a position explicitly referring to #DiamondOA journals. It never mentions that most OA journals do not charge APCs.
https://undark.org/2026/01/07/apc-science-publishing/

_Environmental Health Perspectives_ was a #DiamondOA journal formerly published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (#NIEHS, within the #NIH). When #Trump slashed the NIH and NIEHS budgets, the journal began the process of laying itself down. But now the American Chemical Society (#ACS) will adopt it. Under the ACS, it will remain #OpenAccess but start charging #APCs.

See the ACS announcement.
https://www.newswise.com/articles/environmental-health-perspectives-joins-the-acs-publications-portfolio

See the coverage in Chemistry World.
https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/leading-environmental-health-journal-defunded-by-trump-administration-has-been-saved/4022745.article

#Chemistry #Funding #USPol #USPolitics

Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #WoltersKluwer) falsely asserting that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs. dx.doi.org/10.1097/SAP.... (#paywalled) The article never mentions no-fee OA journals ( #DiamondOA ) or no-fee OA repositories ( #GreenOA ). #ScholComm

Update. Here's another article that made it through peer review (at #WoltersKluwer) falsely asserting that all #OpenAccess journals charge #APCs.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/SAP.0000000000004612
(#paywalled)

General thesis: Paying APCs is a hardship (true) and the prices are going up (true). Therefore, to help medical students publish OA, medical schools should fund their APCs.

The article never mentions no-fee OA journals (#DiamondOA) or no-fee OA repositories (#GreenOA).

#ScholComm

From ⁨⁨⁨⁨⁨#AnnafromUkraine⁩⁩⁩⁩⁩ @[email protected]

#KREMLIN IN PANIC: RUSSIAN MILITARY CONVOYS AND STRATEGIC PLANTS ON FIRE Vlog 1267: War in #Ukraine

Defense Forces destroyed a russian mechanized column of 6 #tanks, 9 #IFVs, 5 #APCs, and 1 armored #recovery #vehicle. In the city of #Budyonnovsk, #Stavropol Krai, #Russia, a chemical #plant, #Stavrolen, is reportedly on fire, denotation continued very long.

#russoUkrainianWar

https://youtu.be/kahnDgbODIM