American Chemical Society and the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (KEMÖ) announce their first ‘Read and Publish’ agreement

WASHINGTON, Feb. 21, 2020 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Austrian Academic Library Consortium (Kooperation E-Medien Österreich; KEMÖ) have agreed to partner for the next three years in a transformative open access pilot agreement. This will enable corresponding authors, affiliated with 11 Austrian research institutions, to publish peer-reviewed articles open access in any of ACS’ more than 60 premier journals at no cost to the author. Researchers affiliated with the participating institutions will also benefit from full access to all articles in ACS journals and Chemical & Engineering News. The consortium agreement was made in coordination with the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), whose support of the open access publishing endeavor was addressed in a separate agreement.

“This partnership represents another milestone for ACS, as the agreement supports Austrian authors to publish articles open access in ACS journals and advances the rapid dissemination of research,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division.

ACS has signed open access agreements in nine countries, offering a blend of publishing options to over 150 institutions, including Germany’s Max Planck Institutes, the U.K.’s JISC consortia and the Bibsam Consortium in Sweden. ACS has experimented with researcher-centric programs for many years — programs designed to stimulate participation in open access publication within its global community of authors, researchers and members. Beyond this new partnership, ACS Publications offers a range of flexible choices by which authors can publish open access. Through these various options, authors have published more than 25,000 open access articles within ACS journals.

The Austrian Academic Library Consortium, Kooperation E-Medien Österreich (KEMÖ), is on behalf of its members responsible for the coordinated acquisition of electronic content and access rights to electronic media, including the coordinated administration of resources. KEMÖ also represents its members abroad, for example, on the supra-regional working group “GASCO,” the German Austrian Swiss Consortia Organisation, or on the International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC) and other relevant interest groups. Furthermore, KEMÖ participates in national and international open access initiatives. More information: https://www.konsortien.at/about.asp

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and its people. The Society is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a specialist in scientific information solutions (including SciFinder^® and STN^®), its CAS division powers global research, discovery and innovation. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.