Report authored by Jennifer Kemp and Katherine Skinner.

Following the release of the Nelson Memo by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy in August 2022, all recipients of US federal research funding will be required to make their federally funded scholarly outputs, including scientific data, freely available via public access venues with no delays or embargos by December 31, 2025. In light of the upcoming deadline, there has been an ongoing and intensifying scrutiny of money paid to make scholarly content publicly accessible.

As part of our project to investigate “reasonable costs” for public access to United States federally funded research and scientific data, we have developed a synthesis report focused on the multi-model scholarly publication ecosystem that facilitates public access as required by the Nelson Memo. This paper outlines the historical developments that have shaped the current landscape, the key financial (cost and payment) stakeholders in the system, and the models and approaches that have developed in the continued shift to public and open access. 

This paper is a companion to the February 2024 report, The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis

 Key Observations and Findings

  1. The scholarly communications ecosystem is in a state of adaptive experimentation. Business model experimentation has led to the emergence of several models that either adapt or borrow from the traditional subscription model. These and other developments in the landscape, combined with uncertainty in the larger political context, make for a rapidly moving target.
  2. Definitions of basic key concepts are still emerging. This report refines price and cost from IOI’s earlier, related paper on research data to contextualize the discussion of scholarly publications. Terms like “publisher” and how common varieties of Open Access are referred to are set out in this report with the understanding that a lack of consensus on preferred language will likely continue for some time. 
  3. Cost and price transparency have become more common. Mandates like the OSTP Nelson Memo have prompted more publishers to provide cost and price transparency information. The literature on this landscape is plentiful but cohesive, “real-worldˮ information on actual costs and payments is lacking and is needed to better support the breadth of stakeholders navigating this landscape.
  4. Interdependencies are a factor. Though prices are set for specific formats, such as APCs for journals, publications are often interrelated, for example, in terms of resources, workflows and related outputs, complicating the question of what is reasonable for scholarly publications, particularly at the system level.
  5. Stakeholder scenarios can help understand prices and costs. Like business models, stakeholders are very varied. Starting to understand what is reasonable requires asking for which stakeholders and roles. This report draws on a large body of literature on costs and prices that can help inform collaborative efforts to address these questions across stakeholders.

Next Steps

In the coming months, IOI will continue to engage with a range of stakeholders to undertake a comparative analysis of workflows, including variability between institution and stakeholder types. The IOI team will synthesize this and produce a white paper and visualizations.

As part of this work, we will develop a cost calculator for researchers and institutions to deploy as they work to determine what costs are reasonable to pass on to American taxpayers via the use of federal funds to publish research outputs in publicly accessible ways. We will also produce guidance documentation for research institutions to help them follow the processes and procedures emerging from our work as “good practices,” testing these with the research institutions involved in our project.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2330827. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The authors thank our reviewers, including Tasha Mellins-Cohen (Mellins-Cohen Consulting), for their feedback on a complete draft of the paper and Lauren Collister (IOI), who prepared this paper for publication. 

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We welcome all questions, comments, and feedback on this work – please email us at research [at] investinopen [dot] org.

Posted by Invest In Open Infrastructure