We are very pleased to announce the University of California’s transformative open access agreement with the American Chemical Society (ACS), the fourth largest publisher of scholarly journal articles by researchers in the UC system.

Through this agreement UC-affiliated corresponding authors will receive support for open access publication in ACS’ portfolio of over 75 premier chemistry journals.

The agreement is ACS’ first consortial “read and publish” agreement in the United States, and the first such partnership between UC, the California State University system libraries, and 25 members from SCELC (Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium), a resource-sharing group of private academic institutions.

Through this agreement, the institutions will redirect subscription expenditures to help cover open access publication charges for their affiliated authors — enabling hundreds of researchers at nearly 60 institutions across California to publish open access at a discounted rate in any ACS journal.

What the agreement means for UC authors: Under the agreement, all UC corresponding authors who choose to publish open access in an ACS journal can do so by paying a single, discounted APC (article processing charge) of $3,000. Authors who do not have research funds available to pay the $3,000 APC can request full funding of the APC from the UC libraries, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access with ACS.

The agreement will apply to articles accepted from January 1, 2022, through December 31, 2025, but the workflow will be in place July 1, 2022. For articles accepted between January 1 and July 1, 2022 ACS will reach out to authors to ask them retrospectively about this choice.

UC affiliated scholars and students will also have full reading access to all ACS publications.

"Free and open access to academic research is critical to the acceleration of new discoveries," says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, university librarian and professor at UC Berkeley, and co-chair of UC’s negotiation team. "This unique partnership will give Californians and people around the world unprecedented access to the knowledge created by our institutions as we seek to solve some of the world's most pressing environmental, health and scientific problems."

You can find the ACS press release here.

For detailed information about the ACS agreement visit the UC web pages (with FAQs) or contact Tiffany Moxham, AUL for Content and Discovery.