Oy vey. What a train wreck. It's heartbreaking that this community has invested decades in developing a nuanced understanding of scholarly publishing, only to overridden by someone with a clearly limited knowledge of how publishing works or what researchers want and need (the number of falsehoods Dr. Bhattacharya puts forward in this interview are too numerous to count). For example, "It costs them [publishers] nothing to put it [research] on the web." Mix this ignorance with Kirk's xenophobia (Springer is a "foreign company") and Bhattacharya's contrarianism (a COVID lockdown opponent who thinks Springer and Elsevier suppressed the truth during COVID) and you get the new NIH policy.
This is all so strange, though. I had money that the Charlie Kirks of the world would try to shut down open because, you know, making American-taxpayer-funded science knowledge easily accessible to other countries is just dumb. Who knew he would argue instead that what we really need is more fake science flooding the market so the truth of Ivermectin could finally shine through? My new goalpost is that JB will mandate that pre-publication peer review is suppression and that "open" will literally mean you say it, we'll print it.
On the up side, I'm confident that this community and the community of science researchers will figure out how to work around these new rules in order to continue protecting the integrity of research. Good luck though---it's going to be a bumpy couple of years.
Best regards,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)<sci.institute>
[cid:image001.jpg@01DBF171.77F3B3A0]
From: OpenCafe-l <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Meagan Phelan
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2025 5:08 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [OPENCAFE-L] NIH cap on APCs
Thanks for sharing that link, Lisa. In the latter part of the Charlie Kirk interview-the final few minutes, where they talk about the covid pandemic and open science-JB is saying open research will make it much harder for a small number of scientific elite to say what's true and false. But: we've had more research open than ever recently-including b/c all covid research (his area of concern) was open-and yet that didn't stop "few people dominating scientific discussion" (which Jay laments as a problem). Then Charlie Kirk adds that science was used as a tool to suppress liberty, during covid. (But, again, much more science was open than ever, during covid. My question is: What will they say when more content is open and the [perceived] problems don't go away?) I attempted a wee write-up about this more broadly in Science Adviser on 4 July ("Free isn't enough<https://view.aaas.sciencepubs.org/?qs=b796aefa78a38ae7e6a7b5954e934d7cc832dccbfa35faf8d34f529aca45f0bb5cdd2bd73813d27a36874dfb070330cf6a5df9c32985afa5f2e0b5857346ac749a5557f10053a715d9de55e3e9e48076>.") I also had a great conversation with another publisher on this about two weeks ago-the idea that openness is important but must also be accompanied by thoughtful communications-that meet public interest and public concern-that publishers are uniquely positioned to do.
There is an article on this in Inside Higher Ed today, too, if folks haven't seen it yet: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2025/07/10/nih-plans-cap-publisher-fees-dilute-scientific
Best,
Meagan Phelan, Communications Director, Science Family of Journals
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
1200 New York Avenue, NW | Washington, DC 20005
Cell Phone: 404-791-2229
E-mail: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
From: OpenCafe-l <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> On Behalf Of Lisa Hinchliffe
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2025 8:04 AM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [OPENCAFE-L] NIH cap on APCs
[EXTERNAL EMAIL]
I don't have any particular idea on what the cap will be but this Charlie Kirk interview with Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the NIH, provides more context.
https://youtu.be/Q7Xcn2zkydc?si=d4mGUoFtIif6vih0
I learned of this interview from https://www.the-geyser.com/nih-head-publishing-is-free/
Lisa
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
On Wed, Jul 9, 2025, 11:59 PM Danny Kingsley <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Hello, hive mind.
I am wondering if there might be anyone who has any insight about what the cap will be that NIH are intending to introduce:
"NIH will introduce a cap on allowable publication costs starting in Fiscal Year (FY) 2026, ensuring that publication fees remain reasonable across the research ecosystem. The policy aims to curb excessive APCs and ensure the broad dissemination of research findings without unnecessary financial barriers."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research
The article notes $13K, so that's clearly too much, but do we have a sense what the intended cap is?
Thanks
Danny
--
Dr Danny Kingsley
Scholarly Communication Consultant
e: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
m: +61 (0)480 115 937
t:@dannykay68
o: 0000-0002-3636-5939
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