#nelsonmemo — Public Fediverse posts

Update. Another article made it through peer review (this time at #JAMA Network) asserting that the #NIH policy requires NIH-funded authors to pay #APCs.

"Cost of Article Processing Charges to Adhere to National Institutes of Health Public Access Policy."
http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.3463
(#paywalled)

The authors are actually confused and inconsistent on this point. On the one hand, they make clear that compliance through PubMed Central (#PMC) is free of charge. On the other, they say (in Table 1) that green OA articles needn't pay APCs to comply with the older NIH policy but must pay APCs to comply with the new NIH policy.

PS: Some publishers -- like Springer Nature and Taylor & Francis -- do charge APCs to NIH-funded authors to publish in their journals, and don't let those authors publish in their no-APC non-OA journals. They even frame those APC-based paths to publication as ways to comply with the NIH policy. But the NIH policy requires deposit in PMC (#GreenOA), which is free of charge. These publishers are charging APCs to publish in their journals, which is entirely optional and not required by any policy.

#Compliance #FunderPolicies #NelsonMemo #Publishers #OpenAccess #ScholComm