Effective July 1, 2025, open access publishing options with the American Chemical Society (ACS) will change for UC, SCELC, and CSU authors.
At this time, authors who wish to publish under an open access license on the ACS platform will be responsible for covering the full cost of the discounted Article Processing Charge (APC). The option for authors without available research funding to request full coverage of the APC will end on June 30, 2025.
Authors who wish to publish in an ACS journal but do not want to publish open access can still publish articles as paywalled (pay-to-read or subscription-only) content.
Reading access to ACS journals will continue without interruption, essentially reverting to the type of agreement UC had with ACS prior to the open access publishing agreement that began in July 2022.
If you have any questions about this change with ACS, or about open access publishing options at UC in general, please don’t hesitate to reach out to STEM Collection Strategist Michele Potter.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is UC changing its support model for open access publishing with ACS?
The current agreement UC, CSU and SCELC have with ACS was built on the assumption that if authors with research funds available to pay APCs could help to shoulder their costs, the library could stretch its limited financial resources to make OA publication an option for those authors without available funds.
Over the course of the agreement, the percentage of authors who were able to contribute from their research funds decreased to levels well below those of other agreements operating on a similar principle. The resulting cost increases to the libraries under the model are proving to be unsustainable and we have been unable to find an alternate pathway with ACS that would sustain a UC-supported open access publishing option.
As a UC author who publishes with ACS, can I still publish open access?
Yes. We appreciate your commitment to making your research freely available. You can still elect to publish your article open access with ACS, but starting July 1, 2025, you will no longer see the option to ask the library to cover the full cost of publication. At that time, authors will be responsible for covering a single, discounted article processing charge (APC) of $3,000. Authors who are publishing in subscription/hybrid journals may opt out of open access and publish behind a paywall at no additional cost.
As always, authors have the option to deposit their pre-publication, peer-reviewed author accepted manuscript in an open access repository like arXiv or UC’s eScholarship for free.
What does this mean for UC’s other open access publishing agreements?
UC’s open access agreements with other publishers are also unaffected. Open access funding support remains available to UC-affiliated researchers who publish in journals covered under these other agreements, and authors are encouraged to take advantage of it.
What happens next?
UC, SCELC, and CSU libraries plan to negotiate for a new ACS agreement to start on January 1, 2026, for a longer-term approach to support authors and readers of ACS journals. The current agreement was already scheduled to expire on December 31, 2025.