Gates Foundation open access move ‘shifts needle in right direction’

"The open access tool of author-paid publishing fees appears to be nearing an end point, with the Gates Foundation formally joining experts and publishers who see more problems than value in the once-promising alternative to subscription-based scientific journals.

Gates, the largest US charitable foundation with a $75 billion (£60 billion) endowment and a particular focus on global health, said it has paid about $6 million since 2015 to cover the article-processing charges (APCs) for the researchers it funds.

That is a costly practice, the foundation has now concluded, and one that has been doing more to feed perceptions of certain journals as prestigious than to promote overall equity in scientific sharing.

“We’ve become convinced that this money could be better spent elsewhere to accelerate progress for people,” Estee Torok, the foundation’s senior programme officer for malaria, said in outlining a shift that will require the results of Gates-funded research to be made freely available through online preprint formats rather than APCs...."