Caveat Lector

I’ve talked about recalcitrant publishers before, but only theoretically. There had been grumbling and pushback among the publisher ranks, but little more.

Now there’s more.

The American Psychological Association has declared the following:

Authors publishing in APA or EPF journals should NOT deposit, personally and directly, Word documents of APA-accepted manuscripts or APA-published articles in PubMed Central (PMC) or any other depository. As the copyright holder, APA will make necessary deposits after formal acceptance by the journal editor and APA.

(snip…)

In compliance with NOT-OD-08-033, APA will deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript of NIH-funded research to PMC upon acceptance for publication. The deposit fee of $2,500 per manuscript for 2008 will be billed to the author’s university per NIH policy. Deposit fees are an authorized grant expense. The article will also be available via PsycARTICLES.

That’s pretty clear, but I’ll summarize: If you want to comply with the law demanding deposit in PubMed Central for an article we’re publishing, you pay us $2500. Do not complain, do not pass go, do not deposit the article yourself (which is free).

Well now. I didn’t see this particular flavor of recalcitrance coming, I must say. I suppose I ought to have done, because it’s logical and brilliant. The slumbering behemoth doesn’t actually care about publishing until its funding ox is gored. That’s the whole point of the NIH policy in the first place: threaten their funding, they fall into line. To hit back, quoth the APA, we shall simply threaten their funding another way.

(They are not the only ones playing this game. I have it on pretty good authority that the APS is considering a similar scheme.)

This is the acid test, NIH. This is where the loophole you left in your policy gets tested. If you don’t come down on the APA like a ton of bricks, let me tell you, they’re all going to do this. There’s no risk in it for them until you create one.

Good luck. You’ll need it.