(Reuters) -The U.S. National Institutes of Health said on Tuesday it plans to implement a policy that caps how much publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research publicly accessible.
The policy, set to come into effect in fiscal year 2026, will limit allowable publication costs within NIH-funded grant budgets to curb excessive article processing charges (APCs), often required by journals to make research freely accessible, the agency said.
Some major publishers charge thousands of dollars per article for immediate open access while also collecting substantial subscription fees from government agencies straining grant budgets and limiting accessibility, NIH said.
“This reform will make science accessible not only to the public but also to the broader scientific community, while ending perverse incentives that don’t benefit taxpayers,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya said.
The agency said the exact cap will be announced later this year.
The move follows a 2022 White House directive requiring all federally funded research to be made publicly available immediately upon publication.
NIH, a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is the leading medical research agency is the U.S., comprising of 27 institutes and centers, each with a specific research agenda and often focusing on particular diseases or body systems.
(Reporting by Kamal Choudhury and Mariam Sunny in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)
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