NIH Authors Pay $12,850 for Nature Medicine Open Access
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Elizabeth Selvin published a randomized clinical trial in Nature Medicine in June 2025 with zero publication cost.
- Elizabeth Selvin paid $12,850 in 2026 for open‑access publication of a second NIH‑funded study in Nature Medicine to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy.
- NIH Public Access Policy (effective July 1 2025) requires immediate public access of NIH‑funded articles, forcing authors to use publishers’ open‑access routes that charge fees from $4,840 to $12,850.
- Springer Nature (and other for‑profit publishers such as Elsevier and Wiley) retain copyright and maintain embargoes, while nonprofit journals like Diabetes Care can deposit the final version in PubMed Central without embargo and charge modest page fees ($250 per page).
- Diabetes Care runs on a $1.3 million budget, pays staff and reviewers, earns about $120,000 in advertising revenue, and offers discounts/waivers for authors who cannot afford fees, charging $250 per typeset page.
- Springer Nature reported $635 million in profits in 2025, highlighting the financial disparity between commercial and nonprofit publishing models.
Why it matters: NIH‑funded investigators lose tens of thousands of grant dollars to open‑access fees, while for‑profit publishers like Springer Nature reap $635 million in profit, widening the cost gap between commercial and nonprofit journals and limiting researchers’ ability to publish in high‑impact venues.
