Science

Open-access science funders announce price transparency rules for publishers

Science journals will have to disclose the costs of publishing articles in order for them to be paid for by a coalition of research funders pushing for open access.

The price transparency rules, which will take effect in July 2022, were announced today by cOAlition S, a group of 22 international organizations, European national research agencies, and foundations. In 2018, cOAlition S launched a scheme called Plan S that will require grantees’ work, beginning in January 2021, to be open access, meaning it can be read immediately upon publication, free of charge. One route to accomplish this is for authors to pay journals a fee for each article published this way.

cOAlition S wants the rules to help keep these fees reasonable. The rules require publishers to provide a break down of their prices: what percentages go to cover the cost of services such as proof-reading, copy-editing, and organizing peer review. If they don’t, “we will not meet any publication fees associated with that publisher,” says Robert Kiley, interim coordinator of cOAlition S and head of open research at the Wellcome Trust, one of the coalition’s members. “The intention is to provide more granular information about the value components of each journal article price point,” says Steven Inchcoombe, chief publishing officer at Springer Nature, which publishes the journal Nature.