Policy Considerations for Canada’s Open Access Publishing Strategy

Open access publishing is primarily driven by the motivation to make publicly funded research findings freely available to potential readers. This can entail increased costs for authors, research institutions, and funding bodies, although the relative costs for stakeholders of open access publishing depends on the publishing sub-type. This point is highly relevant to Canada’s research funding agencies, which are reviewing their Open Access Policy on Publications, with a renewed policy to be released before 2026. Here, I review the open access publishing options, and I recommend Canadian funding agencies incentivize a shift to Diamond open access publishing.