KEY TAKEAWAYS

• US guidance mandates that, from 2025, all publicly funded research is open access from the time of publication.
• The publishers of Science highlight the importance of equitable access for both readers and authors, and propose immediate green open access as one of the potential solutions.

In recent years, Europe has seen Plan S accelerate open access to publicly funded research. Now, guidance from The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy mandates that, by 2025, all publicly funded research in the US must be open access at the time of publication. As publishers consider how best to meet this requirement, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publishers of Science, have proposed one solution and called on others to join the discussion.

In a recent editorial, AAAS set out some of the key challenges faced by publishers as they seek to “balance the tensions between equitable access for readers and equitable access to publishing”. In other words, how can publishers ensure readers have open access to articles while ensuring researchers can equitably obtain open access publication? The authors highlighted that while the current commonly employed open access model, based on payment of article processing charges, ensures open access for readers, it can result in a system skewed to well-funded senior researchers (who are often white males).

While one of Science’s journals operates under this gold open access model, the publisher plans to use immediate green open access as a tool to meet the US mandate for its remaining, currently subscription-only journals, as outlined in a recent Nature news article. Authors of publicly funded research accepted by these journals are now able to utilise the ‘green open access-zero day’ policy, posting their peer reviewed, author accepted manuscript in a public repository without additional journal fees. AAAS has invited further discussion within the research and publishing communities to refine approaches to open access, stating: “We must not sew more structural inequity into the very fabric of the enterprise we seek to improve.”

AAAS has invited further discussion…to refine approaches to open access, stating: “We must not sew more structural inequity into the very fabric of the enterprise we seek to improve.”

To this end, Science correspondents have begun to share their thoughts and proposals, including suggestions for international standards for article processing charges and open access publication and to designate articles as open access only after a publication decision is reached. Both strategies are aimed at ensuring publication quality is protected over volume.

The ongoing discussions illustrate that providing an open access publishing system that is equitable, fair, and inclusive remains challenging. As outlined by AAAS, such a challenge requires publishers to work together with governments, funding bodies, and the wider scientific community to find a mutually agreeable way forward.

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