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https://www.science.org/content/article/major-china-funder-plans-curtail-spending-pricey-open-access-fees
Major Chinese funder to stop paying fees for 30 pricey open-access journals
Move comes amid effort to grow the country's own journals
24 FEB 20265:45 PM ETBYJEFFREY BRAINARD
In a challenge to open-access publishers, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the world’s largest research institution, has told its researchers it plans to stop paying to publish their papers in dozens of international free-to-read journals it regards as too expensive. High-profile, high-fee journals affected include Nature Communications, Cell Reports, and Science Advances.
CAS, which employs more than 50,000 researchers across some 100 institutes, has yet to publicly announce the new policy, expected to take effect on 1 March. Observers say it is likely aimed at controlling costs and perhaps boosting China’s own journals. Despite CAS’s silence, affected researchers, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the policy, shared excerpts of messages about it they received from managers at their institutions.
One such excerpt says the draft policy would prevent CAS scientists from using academy funds to pay article-processing charges (APCs), which publishers charge to make research articles free to read immediately when published, for more than 30 journals. All charge at least $5000 per paper, according to another source. Globally the average APC is about $2000, and CAS’s cost threshold means a number of prominent open-access–only journals, including PLOS One and Scientific Reports, remain open to CAS researchers.
The policy also bars them from using funds from other central government sources—presumably the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Natural Science Foundation of China—to cover APCs in the proscribed journals. CAS scientists may continue to publish in them providing they have other funding sources. They can also publish in “hybrid” open-access journals, such as Nature, that offer both paid open-access and paywalled options, but because that journal’s APC is $12,690, authors must publish behind the paywall, for which there is no charge.
China’s science funders are increasingly emphasizing efficiency and accountability in their spending, says Gengyan Tang, a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary who studies research integrity and China’s publishing policies. “Any limitations on APC reimbursement may be understood within [this] broader effort,” he says, and “not as a categorical rejection of open-access publishing.” Since 2019, the government has been pursuing a plan to develop 400 world-class scientific journals as affordable alternatives to ones based in Western countries; by 2023 the country had about 178 English-language open-access journals, nearly half of which charged no APC, according to a report published that year by the Osmanthus Consulting and Clarke & Esposito publishing consulting firms.
But, the analysis said, China’s home-grown efforts need more time to take root. Meanwhile the country’s researchers are publishing more and more open-access papers, because, among other reasons, it can bring career benefits. These papers may draw more citations than paywalled ones, and some of the open-access journals are prestigious, for example. For now, APC revenue flows mainly to international publishers, which many in China and elsewhere see as an unsustainable practice that allows some of the world’s largest publishers to reap excessive profits.
Other institutions in China may follow CAS’s lead. CAS has led the way on other aspects of journal-publishing policy. For instance, the institute releases an Early Warning Journal List each year naming journals that bear signs of research misconduct, charge expensive APCs, or both. The list does not bind non-CAS institutions, but many follow it. In addition to blocking CAS spending on journals with high APCs, the latest policy also prevents the outlays for an additional 120 journals that have been flagged for research-integrity problems.
CAS’s new APC policy could hit some open-access journals hard. In 2025, approximately 10% of papers in Nature Communications and Science Advances had a CAS-affiliated author, and about 40% of papers in each had an author at any institution in China, according to a Science analysis of data in the Web of Science bibliometric database.
Meagan Phelan, a spokesperson for the Science family of journals, says CAS has not told editors at Science Advances, which charges an APC of $5450, about the new policy. “Authors from China, including those affiliated with CAS institutions, are important contributors to Science Advances,” Phelan says. (Science’s News staff is editorially independent.)
Springer Nature, which owns Nature Communications, and Elsevier, whose holdings include Cell Reports, did not immediately provide comment. Those two journals charge APCs of $7350 and $5790, respectively. Those publishers have said particularly selective journals like these tend to charge more because they reject the majority of manuscripts submitted and the APCs of accepted papers must cover the costs of reviewing all.
Other countries have taken steps to reduce spending on APCs, although their policies are not as restrictive. Germany’s national science funder, the German Research Foundation, for example, caps its reimbursements for APCs, an approach that the U.S. National Institutes of Health is considering adopting.
CAS’s new policy may reflect that movement, says information scientist Lin Zhang of Wuhan University, who says she has not received the text. “It reflects a structural tension in global scholarly publishing, as research systems worldwide seek to balance open-access ambitions with long-term financial sustainability and responsible stewardship of public funds.”
doi: 10.1126/science.zobbgx9
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发表于 2026-2-18 11:11:51
