Enlarge / With physical subscriptions becoming increasingly irrelevant, researchers will have to pay more to get their research published. (credit: Xu Wu / Getty Images)
In August, the US government announced that it was adopting a policy requiring that all the research it funded is open access. A key element of this plan is that, once the policy takes effect, every research paper that results from this research must be open access the day of its publication. That means anyone can view the research—no journal subscription or one-time payment required.
That, obviously, could pose problems for the academic publishing business, which depends heavily on subscriptions as things are currently structured. To adapt to the inevitable future, many publishers have been adopting "article processing charges" (APCs), or fees paid by the people publishing the paper for the privilege of doing so. All of this is raising an awkward question: Who's going to pay the APCs?
On Tuesday, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) released a survey of researchers that suggests some are already struggling to find the cash to cover APCs, and in some cases, are taking it out of budgets that would otherwise pay for scientific work.
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