White House issues guidance on controversial ‘Gold Standard Science’

posted on Jul 5, 2025
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Following its announcement last month that the US National Institutes of Health would implement a cap on allowable publication costs and associated comments that OSTP Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya made in interviews (here and here), NIH has announced five potential options for limiting the amount of taxpayer money that goes to support publishing:

  1. Disallow all publication costs.
  2. Set a limit on allowable costs per publication (e.g., $2000).
  3. Option 2, but allow higher amounts when peer reviewers are compensated (e.g., $3000).
  4. Set a limit on the total amount of an award that can be spent on publication costs (e.g., 0.8% of a grant).
  5. Both option 2 and 4.

Their approach is outlined in a blog post and in the request for information, which is open for comment through 15 September. The RFI outlines five specific questions, including a catch-all ‘other’ option, but also allows responses with attachments.

STM will be submitting a response and strongly encourages all our members to do so as well.

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