U.S. agencies aren’t ready for the rising cost of making research papers free, report warns | Science | AAAS

"Still, some observers fault GAO for assuming the author-pays publishing model would predominate over others that might not cost agencies so much, such as encouraging authors to deposit articles in public repositories or supporting journals that make articles free to read without charging fees or subscriptions. “It is not the federal government’s responsibility to prop up a particular business model,” says Christopher Steven Marcum, a consultant who as a White House official during the Biden administration helped write the Nelson Memo. (That memo did not endorse a particular business model.) “The report seems to say, publishers control all the power, so federal agencies just have to cough up more money for them. I’m a little bit mystified by that.” "