Status: Ongoing
Partners: Big Ten Academic Alliance, Historically Black Colleges and Universities Library Alliance, IvyPlus Libraries Confederation, American Geophysical Union, NIH Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI), U.S. Repository Network, re3data
Team members: Katherine Skinner, Sarah Lippincott, Gail Steinhart, Lauren Collister, Jennifer Kemp, Eric Schares
Overview
IOI is conducting an investigation into “reasonable costs” for public access to United States Federally funded research and scientific data.
With financial support from the National Science Foundation (US), we seek to determine:
- how much “public access” publishing costs are today for prevalent science publication formats (including articles and data)
- how much research institutions are spending in anticipation of compliance with public access mandates
- how similar or different the approaches and choices are for research institutions of different tiers and demographics.
Project outputs
Papers:
- Steinhart, G., & Skinner, K. (2024). The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10729575
- Kemp, J., & Skinner, K. (2024). The Cost and Price of Public Access to Scholarly Publications: A Synthesis. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14013059
- Steinhart, G., Collister, L., Kemp, J., Lippincott, S., & Skinner, K. (2025). Between the Memo and the Mandate: Institutional Perspectives on Public Access Readiness. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15706351
- Collister, L., Lippincott, S., Kemp, J., Skinner, K., & Steinhart, G. (2025). Preparing for Public Access: Mapping Institutional Workflows for Sponsored Research Success. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15611424
- Accompanying workflow packet: Lippincott, S., Skinner, K., Collister, L., Kemp, J., and Steinhart, G. (2025). Example Workflows for Federal Funding Administration at US Institutions. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15611424
Blog posts:
- Steinhart, G., & Collister, L. (2023, December 11). To fee or not to fee: Charging for deposit to research data repositories. Invest in Open Infrastructure. https://investinopen.org/blog/blog-to-fee-or-not-to-fee/
- Steinhart, G., & Collister, L. (2024, March 4). The Cost and Price of Public Access to Research Data: A Synthesis. Invest in Open Infrastructure. https://investinopen.org/blog/the-cost-and-price-of-public-access-to-research-data/
- Schares, E. (2024, July 31). Data on Datasets: Quantifying US federally funded records in DataCite. https://investinopen.org/blog/data-on-datasets-quantifying-us-federally-funded-records-in-datacite/
- Kemp, J., Skinner, K., & Sellanga, J. (2024, October 31). The Cost and Price of Public Access to Scholarly Publications: A Synthesis. https://investinopen.org/blog/the-cost-and-price-of-public-access-to-scholarly-publications-a-synthesis/
- Collister, L., Lippincott, S., Kemp, J., Skinner, K., & Steinhart, G. (2025, June 26). How are US institutions putting public access into practice? Insights from our ‘Reasonable Costs’ institutional research. https://investinopen.org/blog/reasonable-costs-institutional-public-access
Conference talks:
- Skinner, K., Steinhart, G., & Collister, L. (2024, March 22). Responding to the Nelson Memo: Investigating Cost and Price in OA Data and Publishing. Year of Open Science Culminating Conference, Online. https://osf.io/gnj47/
- Steinhart, G., Schares, E., & Skinner, K. (2024). Navigating the future of data sharing: The impact and cost of expanded public access requirements. IASSIST & CARTO 2024, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11263223
- Collister, L., Dollar, D., Rachlin, D., & Walsh, M. (2025, April 4). “Realizing public access to federally funded research: Views from a range of academic libraries.” (Panel.) Association of College and Research Libraries, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Slides.
- Collister, L. & Kemp, J. (2025, May 7). “‘Reasonable Costs’ for publishing: What do we know now, and what can library publishers help us find out?” Library Publishing Forum. Virtual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4TP80_0pDk
- Collister, L., Skinner, K., & Steinhart, G. (2025, June 16). "Repositories in the US Federal Funding Workflow: Lessons from the 'Reasonable Costs for Public Access' Project." Open Repositories 2025, Chicago, IL, USA. Slides.
Webinars:
- Skinner, K. & Thaney, K. (2024, January 9). "Investigating Cost and Price in OA Publishing." Federal Open Science Hour. Slides.
- Skinner, K. & Collister L. (2025, January 23). "Supporting Public Access: The Cost and Price of U.S. Institutions' Changing Research Workflows.” ICPSR webinar series. https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/pages/membership/webinars-icpsr.html?nid=6065
- Skinner, K., Collister, L., Lippincott, S., Kemp, J., & Schares, E. (2025, April 15). “Investigating Price, Cost, and Workflows Associated with Public Access” Federal Open Science Hour. Slides.
Grant proposal: Thaney, K., & Skinner, K. (2023). Grant proposal: EAGER: Investigating "reasonable costs" to achieve public access to federally funded research and scientific data. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8369835