The AAMC, with the Association of American Universities, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and COGR, submitted a letter (PDF) on Sept. 15 in response to the NIH’s request for information (RFI) on limiting allowable publication costs for NIH awardees. In the RFI, the agency stated that “journals with large publishing fees can lead awardees to pay unreasonably high fees from their NIH awards that lessen the funds available for conducting research and which burden American taxpayers.”
In the response, the associations reaffirmed their commitment to enhancing the utility and accessibility of federally funded research, while arguing that arbitrary limits on the allowability of publication costs such as article processing charges could undermine these goals and could fail to incentivize or drive the behaviors of publishers that the NIH seeks to change.