Unfair publisher fees for deposit into repositories highlight the need for authors to exercise their rights – COAR

"Regrettably, some publishers have begun to apply a fee to authors who want to make their AAM open access challenging a long-established practice of authors sharing manuscripts through open repositories. As noted by Coalition S, these publishers are audaciously seeking to monetize funder mandates making it more difficult and expensive for authors to share their articles through repositories. This practice first came to COAR’s attention when the American Chemical Society implemented an article development charge for AAM deposit in 2023, and more recently, with another publisher, the IEEE....

COAR and many others strongly object to this practice for a number of reasons:

• The charges applied are completely arbitrary and not based on any real service provision (for example, IEEE applies a fee to authors who want to apply a CC-BY licence to their AAM; and ACM applies a fee for removing the embargo period). They are just another funding stream for publishers that are already making huge profits.
• Deposit fees disadvantage authors who do not have funding to pay
• These fees amount to double dipping since the final published version of the AAM is made available behind a paywall with no discount
• This practice prevents universities and research organisations from creating an accessible record of their scholarly output. ..."