SPARC Statement on GAO Report GAO-26-107738: Federal Research Publishing Costs May 2026 - SPARC

"The GAO describes a market dominated by a small number of large firms. The appropriate policy response to this broken market should not be accommodation but investment in alternatives that return control of the scholarly record to the research community and to the public, who are footing the bill.

The report states that there is currently “no practical way” for researchers to have their work peer-reviewed without paying a publication charge. This is simply not accurate. It mistakes a business arrangement for a structural necessity. Peer review has always been conducted for free by researchers, for researchers. Publishers coordinate it in some instances; they do not own it. Large commercial publishers want to control the peer review process and condition access to it by charging fees. 

But publisher business decisions should not dictate federal policy, particularly when alternatives exist. Many scholarly societies and university presses support public access without engaging in pay-to-publish schemes. Additionally, overlay journals, community-led review platforms, and discipline-based preprint servers with formal review layers are growing, and the research community has the tools to organize peer review differently and without charging fees to researchers."