American Chemical Society signs its first North American ‘read and publish’ agreement with Louisiana State University

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24, 2020 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Louisiana State University (LSU) today announced a transformative open access agreement. The agreement provides researchers at LSU with full access to ACS journals and allows for financial support for corresponding authors at the university to publish under an open access license in any of ACS’ more than 60 premier journals throughout 2020.

ACS partnered with LSU to create a sustainable open access agreement in order to help the renowned institution accelerate the pace of open access publishing by its researchers. Through this agreement, an author’s article publication charge is completely covered by the read and publish agreement. Authors at LSU will also be able to publish under the most liberal of open access licenses, “CC BY,” and benefit from a seamless online workflow solution created jointly by ACS and the Copyright Clearance Center.

“The read and publish agreement with Louisiana State University is the first such agreement between ACS and a North American research institution and is a milestone in our commitment to advancing open access research globally,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “ACS is dedicated to supporting researchers, and this read and publish agreement is the latest in a series of partnerships that enable authors to focus on research by removing the financial and logistical barriers to publication.”

In the last year, ACS has responded to growing global interest in open access agreements and, to date, has partnered with 10 countries and more than 150 institutions worldwide, including Germany’s Max Planck Institutes, the U.K.’s JISC consortia and the Austrian Academic Library Consortium. ACS continues to provide researcher-centric solutions — programs that have been designed to stimulate participation in open access publication with its global community of authors, researchers and members. Beyond this new partnership, ACS 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.

LSU is the flagship institution of Louisiana and is one of only 22 prestigious universities nationwide holding land-grant, sea-grant and space-grant status. LSU’s roots run deep, shaping contributions to the state, the nation and the world for nearly 160 years. The LSU Libraries supports the academic mission of the university by fostering teaching, learning and research. Through its commitment to excellence in collections, services and spaces, the Libraries serves as an indispensable intellectual resource for the state of Louisiana and to communities worldwide. Visit www.lib.lsu.edu.

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.