Gates Foundation, and me: Mandate preprints, support peer review services outside of big publishers | Alex Holcombe's blog

"Today the Gates Foundation announced that they will “cease support for individual article publishing fees, known as APCs, and mandate the use of preprints while advocating for their review”. I am excited by this news because it’s been disheartening to see large funders continue to pour money down the throats of high-profit multinational publishers over the last couple decades, even when more in the form of APCs than subscription fees.

In their announcement, the Gates Foundation has recommendations for research funders that include the following:

Invest funding into models that benefit the whole ecosystem and not individual funded researchers.

They also state that funders, and researchers, should: Support innovative initiatives that facilitate peer review and curation separately from traditional publication.

Diamond OA journals, which are free to readers AND authors, clearly fit the bill, as well as journal-independent review services such as Peer Community In, PreReview, and COAR-Notify. I’m an (unpaid) advisory board member of the Free Journal Network, which supports (and does some light vetting of) diamond OA journals. I’m also an associate editor at the free WikiJournal of Science, Meta-Psychology, and the coming Meta-ROR metascience peer review platform. All of these initiatives are oriented around providing (free) peer review of preprints...."