"For Researchers in the Humanities, Is Open Really Fair?"
https://katinamagazine.org/content/article/open-knowledge/2025/for-researchers-in-the-humanities-is-open-really-fair

PS: This article objects to #APCs and "transformative" (#ReadAndPublish) agreements, especially in the humanities. So far, so good. But then it leaves the false impression that all or most #OpenAccess falls into those two categories, which is false and harmful. It never mentions #GreenOA. It mentions #DiamondOA once, for books, and never for articles. It's strong on problems and very weak and even misleading on solutions.

I share the objections to APCs and read-and-publish agreements. I wrote stronger versions of them, extended to all disciplines, for the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary statement.
https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai20/

I'm in the humanities and (with the exception of one 1999 book) have made all my books and articles OA. I've never paid an APC and never will. I boycott APC-based publishers both as an author and referee and encourage others to do so.

Scholars in the humanities need accurate info about their OA options, not one-sided criticism of OA as such.

#BOAI20 #Humanities

Thanks to #SPARC ( @sparc) for this new "Guide for Authors Complying with U.S. Federal Agency Public Access and Publisher Policies."
https://sparcopen.org/our-work/guide-for-authors-complying-with-policies/

Bottom line: Compliance with the US federal #OpenAccess policies is free of charge. Publishers who charge fed-funded authors a fee to make their work OA are charging to publish in their journals, not charging to comply with fed policy. You can publish elsewhere and avoid those fees.

#APCs #Funders #OAintheUSA #USA

The #NIH is calling for public comments on its plan to cap the use of grant funds to pay #APCs. It seeks comments on five listed options and/or suggestions for other options.
https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-25-138.html

The comment deadline is September 15, 2025. The NIH plans to start implementing its APC-capping policy on January 1, 2026.

#Funding#Medicine #OAintheUSA

The #NIH just announced that it will "cap how much #publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research

We don't yet know the cap or how NIH will calculate or enforce it.

#APCs#DefendResearch#GoldOA#OpenAccess#ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch#USPol#USPolitics

The #NIH just announced that it will "cap how much #publishers can charge NIH-supported scientists to make their research findings publicly accessible."
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-crack-down-excessive-publisher-fees-publicly-funded-research

We don't yet know the cap or how NIH will calculate or enforce it.

#APCs#DefendResearch#GoldOA#OpenAccess#ScholComm #Trump #TrumpVResearch#USPol#USPolitics

Update. Here's a published article making a cluster of false claims about #OpenAccess journals: "In the OA model…costs are…covered by Article Processing Charges ( #APCs) paid by the authors ( #GoldOA); in relatively rare cases, some funders cover the full costs of a journal ( #DiamondOA) to make it free for readers and authors alike."
https://www.ssph-journal.org/journals/international-journal-of-public-health/articles/10.3389/ijph.2025.1608614/full

1. It claims that most OA journals charge APCs and that diamond OA journals are rare. But most OA journals do NOT charge APCs and diamond OA journals predominate.

Today the #DOAJ ( @DOAJ) lists 21,597 OA journals, of which 13,735 or 63.5% are diamond.
https://doaj.org/

2. It claims that at APC-based OA journals, APCs are (always) paid by authors. But while this tends to be true in the global south, even there it's only a tendency, not a universal truth. In the north, APCs are usually NOT paid by authors but by their funders or employers.
https://suber.pubpub.org/pub/j1jk6hu9

3. There are many ways to fund a diamond or non-APC OA journals, not just by having funders cover their costs.

BTW, this piece is called a "commentary" and might not have been peer-reviewed.

In the rest of the piece, the authors complain about misunderstandings of their journal.