UK Competition Authority Reviews Academic Publisher Article Charges
Regulatory review focuses on open access processing fees and bundled institutional journal subscription contracts.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched an information-gathering review examining Open Access Article Processing Charges (APCs) and journal subscription licensing contracts offered by major academic publishers.
The review responds to concerns raised by university libraries regarding escalating APC fees required for academic researchers to publish open access papers.
Review Focus
- Pricing Transparency: Evaluation of cost structures underlying open access processing charges.
- Institutional Bundling: Assessment of bundled journal package contracts offered to university research libraries.
- Author Rights Retention: Protecting academic authors' rights to self-archive research in institutional repositories.
The CMA's findings will inform future higher education publishing policy guidelines in the UK and Europe.
Sources
Ruth Kelleher
Editor
Ruth has covered the publishing trade since 2009 and sets every directory standing on Authors Daily. She is the named contact for corrections and right-of-reply requests.
The day in five minutes
Deals, warnings and platform changes, in your inbox each weekday morning.
Related stories
Princeton University Press Signs AI Licensing Deal With Cashmere, Bars Catalog From LLM Training
The academic press joins Rockefeller University Press and Springer in routing its catalog through a licensing platform built to keep scholarly work out of LLM training sets while still supporting retrieval-augmented AI tools.
FTC Enforces Final Rule Banning Fake Author Reviews and Deceptive Testimonials
The Federal Trade Commission’s regulations targeting consumer and book review fraud carry penalties of up to $51,744 per violation for operations buying fake reviews.
US Copyright Office Updates Guidance on AI-Assisted Literary Works
New registration guidance clarifies the threshold of human authorship required for copyright registration when authors use AI writing assistants.