As the research community navigates recent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) revisions, a seductive argument has surfaced in the debate over open science: why do we need article processing charges (APCs) at all when Green (repository deposit) and Diamond (institutionally subsidized) OA models exist?
| Key Takeaways |
| APCs enable scale: Green and Diamond OA cannot handle national publication volumes on their own; focus on price transparency and fee caps rather than blanket APC bans. |
| Grant rules risk equity: Complex publication-cost rules hurt early-career and underfunded researchers most; institutions need clear pathways and central offset funds to support them. |
| Targeting APCs protects paywalls: Cracking down on APCs starves pure OA publishers while driving libraries back into expensive legacy subscription models where taxpayers pay twice. |
It is a seductive argument because the individual points feel true. We all want a fairer, more affordable publishing ecosystem. But if we look at how publishing actually works at scale, relying solely on Green or Diamond models to replace APCs doesn't create a freer system—it risks dismantling the open access progress we’ve spent the last two decades building.
The idea that repository deposits make APCs obsolete misses a critical step: the work of publishing. Green OA typically preserves the *author-accepted manuscript*, not the final version of record. Someone still has to manage peer review, build editorial infrastructure, and handle permanent digital preservation.
Green OA is only "free" because a subscription or an APC funded that labor somewhere else first. If we defund APCs, that foundational funding vanishes. We won’t get a world of free publishing; we will just force journals back behind subscription paywalls.
Diamond OA or Subscribe-to-Open (where neither authors nor readers pay) is a fantastic model for niche, discipline-specific journals. But "free to the author" does not mean free to operate. These journals run on library budgets, institutional subsidies, and heavy volunteer labor.
Right now, Diamond OA cannot absorb the massive volume of U.S. federally funded output, particularly in high-velocity, high-stakes fields like clinical medicine and digital health. Forcing a model that only works at a small scale while defunding the model that carries the actual volume guarantees a massive capacity gap.
The argument that APCs only enrich massive commercial publishers conflates two very different business models. Major legacy subscription publishers get their revenue from institutional library bundles, not federal grants. They will survive an APC crackdown just fine.
The players who will actually get hurt are fully open-access, independent publishers and, crucially, authors at smaller or less-resourced institutions who don’t have massive "read-and-publish" institutional deals to back them up. We risk crippling the exact reform-minded, OA-native innovators we want to champion.
The historic crisis of skyrocketing library costs wasn't caused by transparent, per-article APCs; it was caused by opaque, predatory subscription bundling. Cracking down on APCs does nothing to fix subscriptions. In fact, it pushes libraries and publishers right back into the cycle of bundling, resurrecting the exact problem we've been trying to solve. If cost is the issue, the solution is price transparency and caps, not a blanket ban.
There is a popular talking point that taxpayers shouldn't foot the bill for both the research and the publication. But under a transparent APC model, taxpayers pay once, up front, and the entire world reads the research for free, forever.
If we defund APCs and push journals back to subscriptions, taxpayers pay for the research, and then their public university libraries have to buy access back through a subscription. That is paying twice.
Some view the new OMB guidelines as a simple accounting shift—just add a budget line for publication costs. But in the real world of grant administration, making APCs "unallowable" by default creates an immediate chill.
Decisions about where to publish are usually made mid-project or post-award, not years in advance during the initial grant application. Navigating the tightening prior-approval regimes and audit risks requires significant administrative support. Established labs might manage it; early-career researchers and underfunded institutions will simply be priced out of publishing in top-tier venues.
We cannot build a robust, open-access national system by defunding the primary mechanism that scales it. While Green and Diamond OA are valuable pieces of the puzzle, treating them as a complete replacement for APCs will inadvertently reverse open access progress, strengthen legacy paywalls, and hurt the most vulnerable researchers in our community.
What are your thoughts? How is your institution preparing for these OMB shifts, and what impacts do you foresee on your publishing choices? Let’s discuss in the comments below, or reach out to us with your questions.