Funder: National Science Foundation (US)
Skillset: Landscape Analysis, Convening / Facilitation
Overview
When the U.S. Federal Government issued new guidance requiring free, immediate, and equitable access to federally funded research and scientific data, it created a significant challenge across the spectrum of researchers and research institutions: nobody had a clear picture of what compliance would actually cost, who would bear those costs, or how workflows would need to change to make it all work.
"Reasonable costs" means something different depending on whether you're a research office, a library, a repository, or a publisher. The National Science Foundation funded IOI to find out what it actually means across all of those perspectives.
What we did
IOI started by speaking with research administrators, libraries, and offices of sponsored research. The answers to questions about cost and compliance may look very different at a large research university than at a small college with a smaller sponsored research operation, and we were deliberate about working across both so that what we found would reflect the actual range of experiences, not just the loudest voices in the conversation.
We also went directly to the repositories themselves. Through surveys and interviews with eight major platforms including Dryad, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse, ICPSR, and Zenodo, we asked what compliance-driven demand increases would actually mean for their operations. What we heard was consistent: the biggest cost factor in running a repository isn't technology, it's people. More specifically, it’s people responsible for coordination, advocacy, curation, discovery, and longevity. These tasks require specific expertise and can't be automated away. That finding matters for anyone designing policy or funding models that assume digital infrastructure scales cheaply.
From there, we worked through mapping exercises with 27 diverse research institutions to trace exactly where public access compliance shows up in research administration workflows. We didn't just ask people to describe their processes. We brought together library, IT, and research office staff at each institution to build workflow diagrams together, then facilitated sessions where institutions compared what they'd mapped across organizational boundaries.
Outcomes
The project produced something that didn't exist before: a clear, evidence-based picture of what public access compliance costs, and how the burden is being distributed across the research ecosystem.
We published two synthesis papers that established the groundwork. One examined the cost and price of public access to research data; the other focused on scholarly publications.
This research surfaced the finding that what publishers and repositories actually spend to enable public access, and what institutions pay in the marketplace, often bear little relationship to each other. Cost information remains largely unknown, price reporting is inconsistent, and disciplinary variation is enormous. These aren't just academic observations; they're the reason institutions were struggling to plan and budget in the first place, and they point to a transparency problem that no single institution can solve on its own.
The mapping exercises gave 27 institutions a concrete look at their own processes and surfaced gaps that hadn't been visible before. Sponsored research workflows turned out to be highly unstandardized, shaped largely by local relationships and politics rather than shared models. Most institutions assumed compliance responsibility fell primarily on individual researchers. Libraries were often the only unit taking proactive steps, and frequently without leadership visibility into what they were doing.
We published the example workflows, so any research office, library, or IT department can walk through the same mapping exercise and compare what it finds against real institutional examples, rather than starting from a blank page.
We also built two practical tools that came directly out of what institutions told us they needed. The Publishing Profiler helps institutions see their own open access publishing output clearly, often for the first time. The Cost Modeler lets them work through the actual numbers for article processing charges and transformative agreements.
Working through a policy shift? We can help.
New mandates don't come with implementation guides. Research offices, libraries, and repositories are often left to figure out compliance on their own, with limited time and limited visibility into what peers are doing.
The public outputs, including these tools, papers, blog posts, and conference presentations mean this work can inform decisions far beyond the institutions we worked with directly. Anyone grappling with what public access actually requires can find a starting point here.
We want to keep building. If you are a funder or consortia looking to support institutions in understanding their footprint of Open Access publishing output, talk to us. We want to further develop this work.
Project outputs
Our impact, by the numbers:
- 25 research administration workflows mapped (Public examples) and process documentation
- Prototypes of cost calculation tools:
- Publishing Profiler, a tool to help institutions understand their U.S. federal research publication landscape. The prototype provides comprehensive insights into institutional publishing patterns at 30 R1 institutions.
- The (Open Access) Cost Calculator, a prototype framework to help institutions estimate their actual expenditures across four categories of open access costs: output-level expenditures, publisher payments, contributions to services/systems, and internal expenditures.
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.15611423
- 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.15611423
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
- Collister, L. (2025, September 4). IOI's 'Reasonable Costs' Project: Insights and Wrap-Up. https://investinopen.org/blog/reasonable-costs-wrap-up/
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. Slides.
- 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. Slides.
- 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. Recording.
- 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. Recording.
- 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.
- Collister, L., Skinner, K., Kemp, J., Lippincott, S., Neylon, C. (2025, September 4). "Project wrap-up: Investigating 'reasonable costs' to achieve public access to federally funded research and scientific data." Recording.
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
