Editors’ note: Today’s post is by Marcel LaFlamme, Director of Research Policy and Scholarship at the Association of Research Libraries.
As the clock ticks down to the July 13 deadline, comments continue to pour in on the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)’s proposed revisions to the Uniform Guidance, which since 2013 has provided a government-wide framework for how federal awards are to be disbursed. Complementing a recent Scholarly Kitchen post about the impact of these changes on scholarly societies, this post articulates the perspective of research libraries. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a membership organization of 125 research libraries and archives in the United States and Canada. Following scores of conversations over the past six weeks with our members, our partners in higher education, and a range of other stakeholders, including publishers, we stand firm in our opposition to this effort to erode the independence of science and subject it to greater political control.
ARL submitted its public comment on the proposed regulation on July 7, urging the withdrawal of revisions to two particular sections. Our commenting strategy included a focus on the provisions for which research libraries have the strongest standing. In the first half of this post, I’ll delve into some specific issues we weighed. In the second half, I’ll touch on a wider set of issues that we did not address in our comment to OMB but that concern research libraries because they relate to our values and our commitment to scholars and scholarship. That’s why ARL signed on to the community letter by the American Council on Education, knowing that a challenge of this magnitude will not be turned back solely by organizations defending their narrowly defined interests. That’s why we’re speaking out about the real costs of research dissemination, even as library concerns about how value is created and captured in scholarly communication aren’t going away. Meeting the moment we’re in means balancing the needs to block, bridge, and build our way toward more equitable futures.
Core Library Impacts
The first section of the proposed regulation that ARL focused on in its public comment is 200.454, which states that “costs of the recipient’s or sub-recipient’s subscriptions to business, professional, academic, and technical periodicals are unallowable.” This language has given rise to different interpretations of OMB’s intent. Some have argued that the placement of this language, as well as statements made by OMB in the regulation’s preamble, suggest that it only applies to subscriptions included in an award’s direct costs: i.e., an individual researcher pays for a subscription they need. But ARL, following the lead of our partners at COGR, has taken a more expansive interpretation, holding that the language could also refer to the indirect costs recouped by institutions receiving federal grants (which are calculated in a way that includes the institutional subscriptions managed by libraries). Wanting our members to be prepared for this eventuality, we released guidance encouraging them to work with colleagues across campus to model the impact of disallowing indirect costs, and the estimates we’ve heard are on the order of a 20-30% reduction in library collection budgets! Cuts of this magnitude would surely put pressure on existing multiyear agreements with publishers and, ultimately, stymie researchers’ ability to access the scholarly resources they rely on.
The second and, in some ways, more complex section that ARL focused on is 200.461, which states that “publication costs…are unallowable under federal awards.” With no definition of publication costs provided, it’s again unclear whether this cost category is intended to refer narrowly to the examples given in the revision text (“page charges, article processing charges, or similar fees such as open access fees for…peer-reviewed publications”) or more widely to other costs associated with the validation and dissemination of research results. Now, it’s no secret that article-based charges have come under criticism within the library community for failing to address affordability concerns, perpetuating inequality, and creating incentives for unsustainable growth. The temptation was therefore real for libraries to come out in favor of disallowing these charges. But, beyond the risk of simply shifting those costs to institutions in the absence of further reforms, ARL could not in good conscience endorse a statement like the one in the regulation’s preamble: “Publication costs are not inherently necessary to carry out the core programmatic objectives of most federal awards.” If interpreted broadly to refer to all dissemination costs (including, for instance, investments in institutional publishing), then this statement reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what scholarly research entails.
One key consideration as we crafted our public comment was making it clear that libraries do not see public access requirements as a problem to be solved. An AI-driven analysis ARL conducted of the more than 80,000 public comments on the regulation to date found that many individual researchers discussed the changes to section 200.461 in terms of preventing them from complying with agency public access policies. While acknowledging the confusion and frustration that many researchers are feeling, we know that this framing is not entirely accurate – and moreover, it risks empowering the administration to resolve this apparent contradiction by repealing the 2022 OMB memo on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research.” Libraries would see this as a huge step backward for innovation, competitiveness, and accountability to the American taxpayer. While agency policies are not yet working as well as they might, our public comment emphasizes that, short of withdrawing the provisions on publication costs altogether, our preferred outcome would be for OMB to direct agencies to “ensure that it remains practical for researchers to comply with public access policies.”
We know, for instance, that one challenge federally-funded researchers are facing around compliance is that some publishers are routing them toward paid open access rather than allowing them to deposit the accepted version of their manuscript in an agency-designated repository. ARL continues to support the availability of a no-cost compliance pathway for authors, even as we would welcome a conversation with publishers about how to break out and, where appropriate, cover the preacceptance costs that they currently incur. We also recognize a kernel of truth in OMB’s assertion that decisions about publication reflect “institutional, professional, or reputational interests” that go beyond a generalized need to disseminate. More than a decade after the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the expectation to publish in prestigious journals remains a feature of the incentive system within which researchers operate. At ARL, we are closely tracking efforts to reform this system, even as we seek to support researchers while they build their careers in the here and now. Shouldn’t OMB do the same?
Wider Impacts on Scholarship
Looking beyond the impact of the proposed regulation on libraries, ARL has centered its values in making sense of the consequences for the entire research ecosystem. Anything that affects the conditions for producing reliable knowledge affects research libraries, because it shapes the scholarly record that libraries are entrusted with stewarding. To take one example, the value of inclusiveness and equity steers libraries toward ensuring that talented scholars everywhere have the opportunity to contribute to human knowledge-building. The proposed revisions to section 200.220 would create a blanket prohibition on the use of federal funds for international research collaborations with a range of countries, cutting American science off from advances elsewhere in the world and preempting targeted efforts to address research security concerns. For ARL, inclusiveness and equity also mean ensuring that the fruits of knowledge work are applied to benefit society broadly, which is why the proposed restrictions on public relations costs in section 200.421 are so counterproductive at a moment when institutions around the country are building up new capacity to deliver public impact.
Another core value of libraries, academic and intellectual freedom, helps us to understand that public trust in scholarship is weakened when its independence is undermined. Of course, research always takes place in a contested landscape, where stakeholders from elected officials to civil society groups can and do seek to influence how it is carried out. But to insist, as section 200.205 of the proposed regulation does, that every federally-funded research project must be certified by a political appointee as being in conformance with a sitting president’s priorities is short-sighted — and, frankly, scary. ARL believes that expert review should remain the primary determinant of whether a funding proposal is successful, and that a mixed portfolio of basic and applied research across fields is most likely to advance prosperity over the long term. Similarly, we regard the free, fast-moving exchange of ideas with peers as an important precondition for discovery, which makes section 200.432’s proposed requirement for advance approval to attend conferences both burdensome and stifling.
One final area of concern about the proposed regulation hit home for ARL last year, when four federal grants that we had been awarded or sub-awarded were abruptly terminated. Although the grants were eventually restored, we saw firsthand the fallout from suspending research activities that were already in flight. Today, the language proposed in section 200.340 would make discretionary termination of awards due to shifting political priorities a standard feature of the American research system. ARL’s values of operational efficiency and human potential tell us that this is the wrong approach: the costs of this wasteful disruption will be borne by research participants and by students or project staff whose lives get upended. If the federal government cannot be trusted to follow through on the promises it makes when a grant is awarded, then it’s easy to imagine researchers looking elsewhere to pursue their work; indeed, there’s some evidence that they already are. How can anyone conduct gold standard science when, for all they know, their lab or study could be shuttered the next day?
What Happens Next
If you haven’t yet submitted a public comment on the proposed regulation, consider doing so by the July 13 deadline. While OMB’s aggressive implementation timeline casts doubt on how deeply the office plans to engage with the input provided, a recent interview with one of ARL’s member leaders highlighted that “it’s really important to collect the evidence and information about the specific harms and concerns of institutions, and to submit them as part of the comments so that they’re part of the record, both for future administrations and for the present Congress.” On the other side of the comment deadline, ARL will be supporting our members as they navigate budgetary uncertainty and tracking possible challenges if the regulation is implemented in its current form. We’re also trying to keep one eye on the horizon, recognizing that research libraries have adapted to shifts in our operating environment before and ensuring that we have plans in hand that will allow us to continue advancing the research enterprise.
