Canada’s new open-access policy expands access to research, but leaves publishing fees unchecked

Canada’s major federal research agencies recently released a revised policy, first introduced in 2015, that aims to make publicly funded research freely available to everyone. The Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on publications covers research funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Under the revised policy, peer-reviewed articles from Tri-Agency grants awarded after January 2027 must be freely accessible upon publication. By mandating immediate, zero-embargo access without paywalls, federal funders have scored a landmark victory for public science and open access scholarship. Public access to research drives innovation, informs policy, helps address social challenges, strengthens democracy and reduces inequality. But while the policy is good news for open access, it contains a major financial flaw: it allows researchers to use public research funds to pay commercial publication fees without any caps. The cost of open access Article-processing charges are fees paid by researchers or their institutions to make articles freely accessible through a publisher’s website. These fees vary widely, and can exceed US$12,850 for articles in top journals like Nature. Without restrictions, they risk diverting millions in research funding to corporate profits. Researchers can meet the policy’s requirements without paying these fees by depositing their work in institutional repositories or publishing in journals that don’t charge authors. Yet the revised policy places no limit on how much public funding can go towards these charges. In March 2025, one of us cautioned that the draft version of the policy repeated two old mistakes: weak monitoring and uncapped publishing fees. The final policy leaves these charges uncapped, despite mounting evidence of how much public research money they direct toward commercial publishers. Article-processing charges have become a major source of revenue for academic publishers, with academics worldwide paying about US$1.06 billion between 2015 and 2018. They are a corporate goldmine for publishers, while researchers pay for the privilege of doing the digging. Most of this money went to the so-called Big Five academic publishers — Elsevier, Sage, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis and Wiley — which dominate a highly concentrated, oligopolistic scholarly publishing market. More recent research found that between 2019 and 2025, researchers spent as much as US$15.08 billion on article-processing charges to 14 publishing houses globally. Internationally, funders are limiting support for article-processing charges. The Gates Foundation no longer pays commercial publishing fees, while UK Research and Innovation and the international Plan S initiative restrict funding to fully open access journals. The U.S. National Institutes of Health caps how much grant funding can be spent on article fees. Why is Canada lagging behind? What the policy changes Canadian taxpayers invest heavily in scientific discovery. Since 2016, Ottawa has committed more than $41 billion through the Tri-Agency. Mandating that research becomes freely available immediately under open licences ensures Canadians can read, share and reuse research findings. This move aligns Canada with international peers, including the European Union’s open-science mandate and the U.S. National Science Foundation. Public funding supports scientific research across Canada, but questions remain about how research findings are published and distributed. (Getty Images/Unsplash+) The policy requires scholars to retain certain rights over their accepted manuscripts and deposit their publications immediately into a Canadian institutional repository. They can also use trusted Canadian platforms like Érudit or Scholars Portal. This approach helps safeguard national research sovereignty and supports alternatives to commercial publishing. These include diamond open-access journals, which charge neither authors to publish nor readers to access research and are therefore compliant by design. Shifting the burden onto reseachers Rather than confronting commercial publishers directly, the policy places additional administrative burdens onto researchers and universities. Requiring scholars to retain rights can force them to negotiate directly with commercial publishers that have massive legal teams. This burden falls hardest on early-career, pre-tenure and contract faculty. The policy also places additional responsibilities on university libraries. Archiving publications demands skilled labour from academic librarians to check copyright permissions, manage metadata and preserve digital files. Yet the policy provides no dedicated funding for university repositories, leaving libraries to absorb these costs. Publicly funded research plays an important role in advancing knowledge and addressing social challenges. (Unsplash) The policy also misses an opportunity to change how universities evaluate research. The Tri-Agency supports the principles of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), an international initiative co-chaired by Canadian researcher Kelly Cobey. DORA encourages universities to judge research on its real-world impact rather than the prestige of the journal in which it is published. But the revised policy does not require institutions to reform their assessment practices. Without such changes, journal prestige will continue to drive researchers towards commercial publishers. Finally, the policy lacks adequate monitoring and enforcement. Universities must publish open-access strategies within two years, but the Tri-Agency has indicated it will not formally evaluate these plans. From 2015 to 2019, only 44 per cent of Tri-Agency-funded articles complied with the 2015 open-access policy. That non-compliance has been widespread due to a lack of consequences. Protecting Canadian research investment Access to science is a fundamental human right. Public science and access to research are universal goods according to UNESCO, and other global bodies share this view. Canada’s policy risks making open access a contract negotiation, allowing publisher fees to dictate public knowledge sharing. To protect public funds and ensure long-term sustainability, grant agencies should take three clear actions. First, they should eliminate or cap article-processing charge coverage under all grants. Commercial publishers should be required to accept free repository deposits under open licences rather than generating revenue from public funds. Second, they should directly fund public research infrastructure. This means providing dedicated support for university repositories and library publishing networks, as well as non-commercial, diamond open-access journals that don’t have paywalls for authors or readers. Lastly, they should review institutional strategies and enforce compliance. The agencies must monitor open access requirements across all projects and levels while requiring universities to align open scholarship with responsible research assessment. If taxpayer-funded knowledge is to serve the public good, we must stop padding corporate profit margins. Instead, funding must support the researchers, libraries and public platforms that make it truly open.