Supporting Canada’s new open access policy, sustainably

Canada’s revised Tri-Agency Open Access Policy on Publications (2026) was released earlier this month, and Canadian Science Publishing (CSP) welcomes it. The policy will make more publicly funded Canadian research free to read as soon as it is published. That is a goal CSP shares and has long supported. 

Libraries, funders, publishers, scholarly societies, and researchers all share a common goal: to make research widely discoverable, accessible, and useful to the people and communities who rely on it. Open access (OA) helps achieve that goal by removing barriers for readers. However, while open access makes research free to read, it does not make research free to publish. As the policy takes effect, the question for all of us is how to sustain the work behind that openness, including the Canadian publishing infrastructure that does much of it. 

CSP has always allowed authors to share their accepted manuscripts immediately, without embargo, well before the policy required it. This means CSP authors funded by CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC can already deposit their author accepted manuscripts (AAMs) in a Canadian repository as soon as their article is published. CSP authors are also free to add a Creative Commons licence (CC-BY) to the manuscript they are depositing to fully comply with the policy. In this post, we share what goes into producing AAMs, using CSP’s publishing operations as one example. As the scholarly community considers different paths to open, it is important to recognize that openness still depends on the people, systems, and expertise that make research trustworthy, discoverable, and part of the scholarly record.  

The theme of International Open Access Week 2026 is “The cost of knowledge”, so we wanted to revisit what it costs CSP to produce a green open access article, building on a blog post from last year titled “What it really costs to publish a research article.” 

Different approaches to open access

Research can be made openly available in different ways: 

• Preprints are typically shared before publishers have invested in peer review and editorial workflows. However, they still depend on sustainable repository infrastructure and do not replace the systems that support validation and curation of the scholarly record. 

• Green OA is when authors deposit an AAM in an open repository. For research covered by the Tri-Agency policy, that means a Canadian institutional repository or a trusted Canadian platform. The AAM is the version of a paper that has completed peer review and been accepted for publication, but before final copyediting, formatting, and publication as the Version of Record (VoR). 

• Gold, hybrid, or Diamond OA makes the final published VoR immediately accessible online. The VoR is the final fully formatted, indexed, archived, and curated version of the scholarly article. Gold and hybrid OA are typically funded through author-paid article processing charges (APCs) while Diamond OA is funded through a third-party funder.  

Even when research papers are published as open access, copies are often also stored in online repositories. Repositories and publishing systems play different but complementary roles within the scholarly communication ecosystem, and both require sustainable infrastructure and investment. Repositories support access and sharing, while publishers coordinate peer review, editorial processes, discoverability, and long-term stewardship of the scholarly record. Each of these approaches to open access improves access to research, but they are interdependent; none eliminates the need for sustainable scholarly publishing infrastructure.

If an AAM is openly available, how is the work behind it supported? 

At CSP, the costs associated with producing AAMs are supported through our broader publishing revenues, including subscriptions, APCs, institutional agreements, and other funding arrangements. Green OA doesn’t change that work, but it does change how it is paid for: an AAM shared openly is free to read, and the work that produced it still needs support. 

For a Canadian not-for-profit like CSP, this matters. About half of the articles we publish have a Canadian author, and many report funding from CIHR, NSERC, or SSHRC. As the policy phases in, we want to work with the agencies, libraries, and universities to keep the infrastructure that Canadian researchers rely on open, trusted, and sustainable.

Why trusted scholarly publishing requires investment 

Supporting trusted, discoverable research requires ongoing investment in people, systems, and infrastructure. Many of these activities happen behind the scenes throughout the publishing process. Scholarly publishing involves far more than posting a PDF online. Trusted journals depend on editorial expertise, peer review coordination, publishing systems, integrity checks, discoverability infrastructure, and long-term preservation. These systems are often invisible to readers, but they are essential to ensuring that research is rigorous, discoverable, citable, and part of the permanent scholarly record. 

At CSP, these investments are one part of a broader scholarly ecosystem supported by our team of employees, editors, reviewers, and research communities working together to support the communication of science. CSP is a Canadian organisation, and our journals have published Canadian science for nearly a century. As a not-for-profit publisher, every dollar we receive is reinvested into strengthening our journals, supporting our communities, and maintaining the infrastructure required to publish high-quality journals. 

Because most of this work happens before the final article is published online, the costs associated with producing the AAM remain substantial even when the VoR itself is not openly published.

What does it cost to produce an AAM?

Figure 1 illustrates CSP’s average costs to produce and support the AAM. It excludes production, hosting, preservation, and distribution activities specific to the VoR. While the AAM has not yet received final formatting and publication, much of the core publishing work has already occurred at this stage. These figures are averages that show where the work happens.

Figure 1. Breakdown of CSP’s estimated $2,500 CAD in average costs associated with producing and supporting an AAM, based on 2025 operating expenses. Percentages represent the allocation of these AAM-related costs and exclude expenses associated exclusively with producing and disseminating the Version of Record.

In 2025, CSP’s average cost per article was approximately $3,600 CAD (~$2,600 USD). Based on CSP’s 2025 operating expenses, we estimate that approximately $2,500 CAD (~$1,800 USD) of our $3,600 CAD average cost per published article is associated with the editorial processes, infrastructure, and organisational support required to bring manuscripts through peer review to acceptance. While costs vary across journals, most of this investment occurs before the final article is published online. This includes: 

• Editorial: Coordination of the peer review process and editorial workflows

• Peer Review and Integrity: Integrity checks, including plagiarism detection, reference validation, and image screening

• Publishing Technology: Maintaining the systems and workflows that support editorial operations

• Corporate Services: Day-to-day operations like accounting and human resources

• Marketing: Journal promotion, community engagement, and activities that help authors and research communities understand the scope, standards, and relevance of our journals

• Business Development: Library outreach, partnership development, subscription and open access publishing sales activities, and initiatives that support the long-term sustainability of journals 

• Business and Editorial Support: Business support includes legal and insurance costs. Editorial support includes supporting editors, partner societies, and governance structures that connect CSP to our scholarly communities 

What happens before an article becomes an AAM? 

Submission management and peer review represent a substantial portion of publishing costs. For each submitted manuscript, CSP employees check that submissions meet journal requirements and help authors resolve issues before peer review begins. 

CSP’s peer review team works closely with editors and peer reviewers to coordinate editorial workflows and support fair, rigorous, and timely peer review. Our teams also carry out important integrity checks, including plagiarism detection, reference validation, and image screening.  

In parallel, our editorial teams provide ongoing editorial support, working with our Editors-in-Chief on journal strategy, community development, and editorial board management. Many editors are active researchers with significant competing demands on their time, making professional editorial support increasingly essential for journals operating at scale. 

Although much of the work and cost associated with producing an article occurs up to the AAM stage, the VoR also provides additional value. Thanks to our production team, the VoR undergoes final copyediting and formatting, is enhanced for accessibility and discoverability, and is archived and preserved long-term.  

The AAM therefore reflects substantial investment in editorial workflows, peer review coordination, research integrity checks, and journal management. The VoR adds further value through copyediting, formatting, accessibility, discoverability, indexing, preservation, and long-term stewardship. Both versions depend on the same underlying publishing ecosystem, and that ecosystem requires ongoing support. 

CSP has never imposed embargoes on AAM sharing, reflecting our support for broad and timely access to research. With the new policy, many more AAMs will be openly available on publication day, which we welcome. That makes it all the more important to find shared ways to support the editorial, peer review, integrity, and infrastructure work required to produce them.

Sustaining openness, together 

CSP supports the Tri-Agency Open Access Policy and wants it to succeed. Open access benefits researchers and readers, and CSP remains committed to supporting openness and access across our journals. At the same time, it is important to recognize that open dissemination is not cost-free. Different open access approaches shift where costs are supported, but they do not eliminate the underlying work required to produce trusted scholarly research. 

In Canada, that work depends on many partners: the tri-agencies, libraries, and universities, repositories and platforms, scholarly societies, and Canadian publishers like CSP. Each part of the ecosystem contributes different infrastructure, expertise, and investment, and no single organization or sector can address these challenges alone.  

We see CSP as part of the core national infrastructure for Canadian science, open to every Canadian researcher. We are keen to work with the tri-agencies, government, libraries, and universities on how best to sustain that infrastructure as the policy takes effect, whether through direct support for Canadian publishing, open access publishing agreements, or new approaches we develop together. As scholarly communication continues to evolve, the question is not whether Canadian research should be open, but how we can sustain, together, the Canadian infrastructure that makes trusted research possible. Regardless of the approach to open access, sustainable scholarly communication depends on long-term investment in the people, infrastructure, and expertise that support the scientific record. Science is strongest when we work together, and we look forward to doing that work with our partners across Canada.