The open access agreement between Cambridge University Press and the University of California is now ready for author submissions.

The agreement is a 3-year pilot that includes both access to read Cambridge journals and for open access of UC research publications.

The Cambridge University Press author submission system that allows UC Faculty Authors to register their affiliation and publish Open Access was launched on Thursday, September 19, 2019.

During the launch phase in 2019 the UC Libraries will pay the full cost of the OA publishing fees.

How to publish your manuscript open-access

Submit  your manuscript as usual; your acknowledgement email receipt will alert you to the UC open access publishing option. No action will be needed at this point.

When you manuscript is accepted, Cambridge University Press will email you again.  At this time, you will chose whether to publish open access or to keep your article behind the paywall.

If you choose open access, you will receive an email from RightsLink, Cambridge’s open access fee payment system. Choose the option, “Seek Funding from University of California Libraries.”

If you don’t want to publish open access, simply select a non-open access license on your author form, and your article will be routed to follow Cambridge’s standard publishing workflow.

Are all Cambridge Journals covered in this agreement?

Most journals are covered, but approximately 75 Cambridge journals don’t currently offer open access publishing options and are therefore not eligible for open access publication.

What happens with UC authors who already published with Cambridge in 2019?

You or your colleagues may hear from UC authors who published with Cambridge before September 19, 2019. Those authors may have paid an OA fee, or they may be curious about whether they can make their 2019 paywalled article open access retroactively. The short answer is yes, they can. The emerging details about how and when are below.

After our first phase of implementation goes live, Cambridge will start contacting authors who have published in a Cambridge journal earlier in 2019 to retroactively apply the terms of the agreement.

• For the authors that chose OA and paid an APC in 2019, Cambridge will be refunding authors the cost of the APC and will instead guide them through the new workflow. Approximately eight authors across the ten campuses are in this situation.
• For the authors who published in 2019 but did not choose OA, Cambridge will be offering them the chance to make their articles OA retroactively, at no added cost.  Approximately 110 authors across the ten campuses are in this situation.

For additional information, please see the following web pages:

• Cambridge University Press FAQ – live now on UC Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) website:
  https://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/open-access-at-uc/open-access-publishing-at-uc/cambridge-faq/
• Cambridge also offers this informational page/FAQ on their website:
  https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/open-access-policies/read-and-publish-agreements/oa-agreement-for-authors-at-university-of-california

Need assistance submitting your article or finding alternative open access publishing venues? Contact Swati Bhattacharyya, Scholarly Communication Librarian.

If you have any questions about the Cambridge-UC agreement, or other open access agreement questions, please contact Tiffany Moxham, Assistant University Librarian for Content and Discovery.