PLOS responds to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) proposed rule

On May 29 2026, the Office of Management and Budget published a proposed rule change that would fundamentally alter how federal research funding is allocated in the US. The proposed changes have significant consequences for open science, public access and the integrity of the research record.

PLOS' letter is below.

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Honorable Russell T. Vought

Director Office of Management and Budget

725 17th Street NW

Washington, DC 20503

July 10, 2026

Re: OMB-2026-0034, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance.

Dear Director Vought,

We are writing to provide comments on the proposal to revise the OMB Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance located in title 2 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), subtitle A. PLOS is a nonprofit open science publisher working to accelerate progress in science and medicine by making research accessible to all, for the benefit of all.

The proposed rule raises significant concerns. It compromises the independence of research and the role of scientific expertise in federal grant making. It inserts barriers to scientific progress by restricting international collaboration, effective communication of research, conference participation, and contributions of scholarly societies. While PLOS understands the need to continuously drive for transparency and integrity across the research enterprise, the proposed rule does not offer valid solutions and instead threatens the principles of research independence and the efficiency of its conduct.

These concerns have been raised by many others, and we concur with the strong level of concern. In this response, we wish to focus on a specific element of the proposed rule that would affect how federally funded research outputs are made publicly available and reusable. This is where PLOS has direct experience and evidence, having been at the forefront of open science, transparency and public access since its founding in 2000.

Under § 200.461, the proposed rule treats publication costs as generally unallowable, except where required by statute or approved in advance on a case-by-case basis. We recognize that concerns about publishing costs are legitimate and should be addressed, but without supporting alternative models, removing all support for publication costs would have significant consequences for open science, public access and the integrity of the research record.

PLOS recent economic analysis of open science also points to the value created when research outputs can be accessed and reused. These benefits are not limited to the point of publication. They come through wider reuse, reduced duplication, faster discovery and application in new contexts. This is why costs linked to making research available should be assessed against the public and economic value they help unlock.

The proposed rule risks cutting across the goals it sets out to support. It would make federally funded research harder to share, find, scrutinize and reuse.

Research does not deliver its full value if it is completed but not effectively shared. Public access, dissemination, preservation, discoverability and reuse are not add-ons to the research enterprise. They are how research becomes useful to researchers, clinicians, patients, educators, policymakers, businesses and the wider public. They are also how taxpayer-funded research supports innovation, evidence-based decision-making, clinical practice and further discovery.

The recent GAO report on federal research publishing costs reinforces the need for better cost transparency and more sustainable models. However, the framing of the report is problematic; public access should not be treated as synonymous with any single business model. Nor should the costs of open dissemination be considered separately from the wider costs of closed access, including subscription models that can be more expensive and limit who can read and use the research. The answer is not to make the costs that support public availability generally

unallowable. Cost scrutiny should help identify better ways to make federally funded research available and reusable. It should not treat open dissemination as an avoidable extra.

PLOS does not support the status quo. Indeed, PLOS has been actively experimenting with alternative business models to transition away from researcher-facing fees since 2021. The system for sharing research outputs must evolve. Costs should be scrutinized. Models should be clearer and more accountable. Incentives should better support openness, integrity, reuse and public value. But the proposed ruling achieves none of this. Instead, by restricting support for publication and dissemination, it would move the system in the wrong direction. Making research outputs open, connected, trustworthy and reusable requires editorial processes, integrity checks, shared standards, technology, infrastructure and long-term stewardship. The policy question should be how this work is supported responsibly and fairly, not whether it should be treated as separate from the purpose of federally funded research or from the societal value that research is intended to create.

This direction of travel is reflected in PLOS recent Redefining Publishing: Practical pathways to open science work, which recognizes that scholarly communication needs to evolve beyond a system organized mainly around the final article and a single publication charge. Future models should support a more connected research record where articles, data, code, methods, protocols and other outputs can be linked, credited, checked and reused.

PLOS open corpus already shows the wider value of making research available for computational use. Open research can be read by people, mined by machines and used to support new tools for discovery and analysis. As AI becomes more embedded in research, open, trustworthy and well-structured outputs will become increasingly important to scientific impact and economic benefit. These approaches offer practical alternatives to the current system, but they still need support for the infrastructure, standards, editorial work and open science practices that make research trustworthy and useful.

Finally, the proposed rule also risks taking too narrow a view of how US-funded research delivers value. Research funded by US taxpayers should serve the American public, but science does not advance in isolation. International collaboration enables researchers to share expertise, test findings across contexts and improve and extend the value of their work. Open dissemination also supports the global standing of US science. Limiting support for dissemination, or treating international engagement as separate from public value, would make US-funded research less able to deliver on its public purpose.

PLOS supports reform proposals that make the systems for publishing and sharing federally funded research more accountable but despite its stated intent, this proposed rule doesn’t achieve that. Importantly, reform should not limit access to research or reduce its public value. It should make research outputs more available and useful, not create new barriers to collaboration and dissemination. For that reason, PLOS urges OMB to revise the proposed approach so that reasonable and necessary costs that support the public availability, integrity and reuse of federally funded open research outputs remain allowable where they support the objectives of the Federal award.

PLOS will continue to support the researchers, editors, reviewers and communities working to make science open and rigorous and to ensure publicly funded research can be shared and built upon for the benefit of all.

Thank you for your consideration of this response.

Sincerely,

 

Alison Mudditt

Chief Executive Officer

 

Veronique Kiermer

Chief Scientific Officer