The GAO federal research public access report 2026 (GAO-26-107738, published 21 May 2026) finds that most federal agencies have not analysed how rising publication fees will affect their research budgets, and warns that government-wide public access publishing costs could reach $1 billion a year and could triple if current fee-increase trends continue. The report, formally titled Federal Research: Agencies Should Better Manage Anticipated Publishing Cost Increases Amid Shift to Public Access, is the U.S. Government Accountability Office’s first detailed cost audit of the 2022 zero-embargo public access mandate, and it carries direct budget-planning implications for every university and hospital research office managing federally funded output.
GAO-26-107738 is a Government Accountability Office report examining whether nine federal funding agencies have adequately planned for the publication costs created by the 2022 White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directive requiring immediate, free public access to federally funded research.
- What did GAO’s 2026 public access report find?
- Why are public access publishing costs rising now?
- Which federal agencies are prepared for the cost increase?
- What should university research offices do now?
- Common questions about GAO-26-107738
- What happens next?
What did GAO’s 2026 public access report find?
GAO reviewed nine federal agencies — the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Departments of Defense, Energy, Transportation and Agriculture, NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Social Security Administration, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — against the 2022 OSTP public access guidance. The audit found that only NIH has developed a plan to manage anticipated publishing cost increases; every other agency reviewed had not analysed how rising fees could affect its research programmes or budgets.
GAO also examined OSTP’s own 2024 economic analysis of the public access shift and found it did not fully address all five elements GAO requires of a sound federal economic analysis. Critically, OSTP’s analysis did not estimate the policy’s potential costs — the same gap the agency-level reviews found individually. GAO issued 11 recommendations across the nine agencies and OSTP; as of publication, all 11 remained open. Four agencies concurred with GAO’s recommendations and five offered no comment.
Why are public access publishing costs rising now?
The 2022 OSTP guidance (commonly known as the Nelson Memo) ended the option of a 12-month embargo, requiring immediate free access to federally funded research from 2026 onward. Under a subscription model, libraries paid publishers for access after the fact; under a zero-embargo, article-processing-charge (APC) model, someone must pay before publication, and that cost has shifted onto authors, their institutions, or the funding agency itself.
GAO projects that public access publishing costs could reach up to $1 billion a year for the federal government, rising to roughly triple that figure if historical APC inflation patterns persist. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), responding to the report, separately estimated the shift could add $3-4.5 billion in publisher fees over the next five years if current market structures are left unaddressed. GAO’s report also flags an integrity concern raised by publishers and universities it interviewed: because pay-to-publish models reward publishers per accepted article, they can create incentives to lower acceptance thresholds — a dynamic GAO links to the proliferation of paper mills and to at least one major publisher’s retraction of more than 11,000 articles after systematic fraud was traced to its APC-funded workflow.
Which federal agencies are prepared for the cost increase?
Compliance was uneven. Seven of the nine agencies reviewed had issued updated public access plans or policies at the time of the audit; the Department of Transportation and the NRC were still drafting theirs. Of the seven completed plans, only five fully met OSTP’s guidance — NSF and USDA fell short specifically on reuse rights, meaning their policies did not adequately specify how others may share, adapt, or build on the published research.
| Agency | Updated public access plan | Fully meets OSTP guidance | Cost-increase management plan |
|---|---|---|---|
| NIH | Yes | Yes | Yes — the only agency reviewed |
| Defense (DOD) | Yes | Yes | No |
| Energy (DOE) | Yes | Yes | No |
| NASA | Yes | Yes | No |
| Social Security Administration | Yes | Yes | No |
| NSF | Yes | No — reuse-rights gap | No |
| USDA | Yes | No — reuse-rights gap | No |
| Transportation (DOT) | Drafting | N/A | No |
| Nuclear Regulatory Commission | Drafting | N/A | No |
This table is a first-party synthesis of GAO-26-107738’s findings; it does not appear in this form in the underlying report or in current news coverage, and it is the fastest way for a research office to see where its primary funders stand.
What should university research offices do now?
Research administrators should treat GAO’s findings as an early-warning signal, not a distant risk. Federal agencies without a cost-management plan have no committed strategy for absorbing APC increases — which means the exposure defaults to grant budgets and, ultimately, to institutional funds when awards do not cover rising fees.
- Audit APC exposure per funder. Map which of your institution’s federal awards come from agencies that, per the table above, still lack a cost-management plan — that is where budget risk is least mitigated centrally.
- Build APC lines into grant budgets explicitly. Do not assume publication costs are a rounding error; NIH’s own recognition of this risk (the one agency with a management plan) is itself a signal of expected magnitude.
- Track reuse-rights language in funder policies. NSF and USDA’s reuse-rights gap flagged by GAO affects how grantees may license and redistribute outputs — confirm your compliance office is not relying on outdated funder guidance.
- Monitor agency-designated repository requirements. Public access compliance depends on depositing accepted manuscripts or data in the correct agency-designated repository, not merely publishing open access — confirm current repository mappings before submission, as these can change alongside policy updates.
- Watch for OSTP’s revised economic analysis. GAO directed OSTP to redo its 2022 cost analysis; any resulting guidance update could change compliance timelines or funding formulas across all federally funded programmes.
Common questions about GAO-26-107738
What is GAO-26-107738?
GAO-26-107738 is a Government Accountability Office report, published 21 May 2026, examining whether nine federal research-funding agencies have adequately planned for the publication cost increases created by the 2022 zero-embargo public access mandate.
How much could public access publishing costs reach for federal agencies?
GAO estimates costs could reach up to $1 billion a year government-wide, and could roughly triple if historical publication-fee inflation continues. SPARC separately projects $3-4.5 billion in cumulative publisher fees over five years under current market conditions.
Which federal agencies have public access cost plans in place?
Of the nine agencies GAO reviewed, only the National Institutes of Health has developed a plan specifically to manage anticipated publishing cost increases; the other eight — including DOD, NASA, NSF and USDA — had not analysed the budget impact at the time of the review.
Does the GAO report to Congress?
Yes. GAO is a non-partisan legislative-branch agency that conducts audits at the request of congressional committees; GAO-26-107738 was produced for Congress and its 11 recommendations direct specific corrective actions by named federal agencies and OSTP.
What happens next?
All 11 of GAO’s recommendations remain open, which means implementation now depends on individual agency action and on OSTP producing a more rigorous economic analysis of its 2022 guidance. For research offices, the practical implication is that funder-side cost absorption cannot be assumed — budget lines, subaward terms, and library transformative-agreement negotiations should be reviewed against each funder’s current readiness, not against the mandate’s original 2022 intent.
Institutions that build APC forecasting into their research administration workflows now — before agencies finalise cost-management plans — will be better positioned than those waiting for federal guidance to catch up with the mandate it created.