The American Psychological Association (APA) is reportedly reconsidering its plans to charge authors to fulfil the open access (OA) mandate of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). APA had initially proposed to charge authors $2,500 per manuscript to deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript in PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group had recently announced that it would deposit its authors' articles for them for free.
The plan to charge authors has angered some OA advocates. Peter Suber, an independent policy strategist for OA to scientific and scholarly research literature, called this 'the worst publisher policy to date for NIH-funded authors'. He recommended that NIH-funded authors steer clear of APA journals if this policy is implemented.
The policy that was posted online until recently has been replaced with a statement that the policy is being 're-examined' and that it is not being currently implemented. The same link earlier lead to a statement saying APA would charge authors who must archive in PubMed, the repository of papers published by researchers with NIH grants, and would archive their manuscripts for them. APA will soon be releasing more detailed information about the complex issues involved in the implementation of the new NIH Public Access Policy.
The APA has said that it will continue to deposit NIH-funded manuscripts on behalf of authors in compliance with the NIH policy.
