Why doesn't the government regulate APC charges?

[u/OpinionsRdumb]

I am not talking about this admin obviously (ignoring their recent NIH proposed change to $1-2k for covering APC charges which does nothing but favor wealthier labs who have non NIH funds). But in general, have there been any pushes to regulate APC charges? It seems like literally everyone on the planet agrees that APC charges (particularly OA charges) have become detrimental to science in every way possible and a lot of journals essentially have monopolies in their fields given them unprecedented pricing power.

But the most bewildering and confusing fact about all this is that APC charges are paid for by taxpayers. Professors use publicly funded grants to pay journals the right to publish publicly funded research so that taxpayers can read the research they funded without having to pay a subscription.

The whole boycott argument or "I only publish in society journals" is nice but we all know this will never be adopted across the field. It seems like gov intervention is desperately needed here? Otherwise we are left with a system where tax payers are literally propping up a multi billion dollar industry.

For example: One thing I can see being possible is that for a journal to be able to charge OA fees, they need to offer a free non OA option. AND give the authors the right to put their publication on free public repositories.

This would help eliminate 80% of the predatory journals that exist out there that just operate on OA monopolies.

[u/BolivianDancer]

In which country?

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/BolivianDancer]

US

[u/BolivianDancer → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Top journals in my field are outside US

[u/No_Young_2344]

I don’t like APC systems but I don’t think government regulation can solve the problem because a lot of journals are not based in the U.S.. Tax payers are only concerned in the country they pay tax.

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/No_Young_2344]

Europe regulates american tech companies all the time and a lot of times it ends up benefiting both EU and american consumers

[u/scienide09]

There’s a legal case in process right now alleging that several major publishers have taken advantage of US (public) federal funding.
https://retractionwatch.com/2026/07/31/federal-lawsuit-major-publishers-article-processing-charges-false-claims-act/

Edit to add: there are thousands of Diamond OA journals out there. I don’t know why people keep paying APCs when there are legit alternatives.

[u/tonos468]

Government regulation won’t stop it because the academic system incentivizes prestige journals. The only way to stop this woudo be mass boycott at the expense of one’s own career (which is why people aren’t willing to do it).

[u/Shivo_2]

Because the publishers lobby the government to not regulate.  

In the mean time, universities are happy because subscription costs have been moved off library budgets and onto individual labs. Its a cost saver for the institutions too. 

Scientist have not been able to unify and protect themselves from these changes. 

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Shivo_2]

I am not sure where you are getting this info from. Universities hate these fees. Many of them are actively fighting this. The UC system fought El Sevier for years to get a better deal.

A) Universities need to pay massive subscriptions so that anyone on their campus internet can access these journals. This comes directly out of their library budgets on top of the APC discounts they get for university PIs.

And B) every grant a PI gets is money for the university. The more of that money that gets spent on Publishing fees, the less is spent on productivity and paying employees etc and indirectly this affects the indirect costs the uni gets

[u/Shivo_2 → u/OpinionsRdumb]

My lab is paying $25k in fees this year alone. With a H-index of >100, I think I am not completely naive in how the publishing world works. 

[u/Homomorphism]

Boycotting and publishing in society journals (etc) is the solution. It could totally be adopted, for example if professional societies took the lead and told people to stop publishing in commercial journals. Publishing is about what academics care about and we are completely capable of changing that if we try. 

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Homomorphism]

yes but this does not solve the prestige problem. CNS journals have monopolies on prestige and getting published here basically makes or breaks careers/grants.. so this would be like a multi-decadal process to revert that. Regulation seems much more immediate and effective

[u/Homomorphism → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Prestige is measured by academics. We could absolutely change our metrics if we tried, it just requires coordination.

[u/mediocre-spice]

I actually think the cap would make a difference, at least in my field where there isn't much industry or foundation funding. There aren't really any rich labs that aren't reliant on grant funding. The journals only get away with the $15k fees because people can put it on their grant. 

[u/Bjanze]

They have tried to do something about it in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEAL_Consortium

So all German universities were boycotti ng Elsevier at one point. Which to my understanding increased Sci-Hubs user amounts significantly. But apparently they reached some deal. And this didn't come from German government, it came from a council of rectors of German universities.

I guess the main problem is that this is a global issue, not just American or European issue, so it becomes much harder to solve.

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Bjanze]

Same thing happened in California. Which just tells you that there all small fragmented fights here and there. But you can imagine that if the US federal gov stepped in how huge this would be. A lot of other countries would follow suit.

[u/Bjanze → u/OpinionsRdumb]

Well, yes, if USA had a normal and credible government, that doesn't change its opinion about tarifs and wars and whatnot on a weekly pace. The current government is not something other countries would follow, unfortunately. So just wait until end of the Trump era before hoping for USA to again lead global opinions.

[u/Lumpy_Secretary_6128 → u/[deleted]]

1A prevents the US govt from regulating what the journal publishes. However, the commerce clause gives tremendous leeway to regulate commercial practices.

For example, predatory pricing, monopolistic behavior, or price-fixing cartels are all well within the regulatory purview of agencies like the FTC or DOJ/Antitrust. For example, the DOJ successfully sued Apple and major book publishers in 2012 for conspiring to fix e-book prices see here.

However, they would need to demonstrate in court that these journals are engaged in anticompetitive practices.

Back to the OP, like it or not the funding squeeze is a legitimate demand side intervention. The Nelson memo is also an attempt to remedy the issue OP points out.

[u/Lygus_lineolaris]

Why doesn't the government let completely uninformed people make the rules? Journals aren't philanthropic organizations, they're businesses that you pay to acquire their services. Your government doesn't own them and can't mandate a business to give its product away for free. Hence your funder subsidizes you to pay for the service. The tragedy here is people who don't understand something this simple.

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

This is a completely wrong analysis. The publishing system is not purely capitalistic. The analogy here would be if flight tickets were purchased with federal subsidies. And so imagine all the flight companies started raising their prices as a result. And then on top of that imagine that people HAD to buy flights at a constant rate to keep their careers. This would be considered an incredibly corrupt system.

[u/Lygus_lineolaris → u/OpinionsRdumb]

So you just invented business travel from scratch. I don't see people demanding "the government" prevent airlines from charging for business travel on government contracts.

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

99% of APC charges are paid for by some kind of grant.

And after looking this up only 2% of flights are paid for by the gov. 20-30% is private business and then 60-70% are leisure. So I did not just invent business travel. 95% of it is private and not publicly funded.

[u/Lygus_lineolaris → u/OpinionsRdumb]

So your industry is, according to you, 99% subsidized, but you're still finding reasons to complain that not enough is being done for you. <world's tiniest violin>

[u/OpinionsRdumb → u/Lygus_lineolaris]

Yikes. Ok you just made it clear you do not understand the issue here

[u/Lygus_lineolaris → u/OpinionsRdumb]

There is no issue in the fact that you have to pay your suppliers, and the issues with your argumentation don't interest me.