ACS begins 2022 with a major commitment to open science

WASHINGTON, Feb. 28, 2022 — Opening the new year with an ambitious expansion of its commitment to open science, the Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) is pleased to announce four new “read and publish” agreements, which encompass research institutions in the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. These new agreements now bring ACS’ international commitment to open science to over 25 countries at more than 400 institutions worldwide. 

“These read and publish agreements are a crucial aspect of the transition towards open access publishing for our authors,” says Sybille Geisenheyner, director of open science strategy and licensing at ACS. “With the expansion of our read and publish agreements, even more authors will benefit from being able to publish in their desired journal without additional work steps and individual costs involved."

In the U.S., the University of Rochester has partnered with ACS for the next two years to enable their researchers to publish all of their articles open access in any ACS publication. ACS will also continue its partnership with Boise State University, with a renewal of its transformative read and publish agreement that was first signed in early 2021.

“University of Rochester Libraries are especially focused on supporting open access for our researchers,” says Sue Cardinal, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) librarian at the University of Rochester. “We believe that their research impact will increase, and they will have more control over their scholarly products. Additionally, their research will be read by a diverse global audience.”

ACS has also entered into new agreements expanding open access publishing for researchers in Europe and the Middle East. A partnership with the ANKOS consortium in Turkey will provide affiliated researchers the possibility of publishing open access in any of ACS’ journals. In Cyprus, a partnership with the Cyprus Libraries Consortium (CLC) will expand open access publishing for researchers in the country.

“I am happy to share this announcement of ANKOS’ second read and publish agreement, covering ACS journals throughout 2022,” says Güssün Güneş, Ph.D., president of ANKOS. “The agreement includes open access publishing without costs to authors in ACS’ hybrid and gold journals. We will continue to increase the number of transformative agreements in the consortium for our country."

“The Cyprus Libraries Consortium would like to announce the upgraded transformative agreement with ACS in an effort to enhance and support open access,” says a representative from CLC. “We look forward to seeing how this collaboration eases open access publishing for our researchers.”

In a continuation of its expansion to open access publishing in Asia, ACS has also entered into a transformative read and publish agreement with the Taipei Medical University (TMU), which will extend through 2024. This partnership brings the potential for all articles published by the university’s researchers in any ACS journal to be available open access.

“Taipei Medical University is very pleased to be a participant in this program with ACS,” says Tzu-Heng Chiu, Ph.D., university librarian, TMU. “Publishing open access expands the visibility of our faculty and researchers’ research to the global academic community and increases the possibility of professional exchange. By eliminating the cost threshold of article publication charges, this agreement reduces the burden on TMU researchers, encouraging them to publish open access.”

Agreements such as these were pioneered at ACS in response to researchers’ needs. More and more, researchers have expressed a desire to publish their articles open access, whether because of funder mandates, an interest in expanding the visibility of their research results or a personal commitment to the principles of open science. ACS is committed to providing the best outlet for every researcher to publish and to making the open access publishing process easy for them.

The newly launched ACS Journal Finder helps authors discover the best journal in which to publish their research articles, and the tool identifies institutional support for open access publishing with ACS. This includes ACS’ suite of 12 gold open access journals, with 10 titles established in the past two years to provide a home to authors who wish to publish in a fully open access journal. From finding the right journal to the time of publication, ACS has developed tools to improve authors’ experience by redesigning its journal publishing agreement workflow to become more user friendly and piloting projects like transparent peer review to expand access to scientific thought.

“Ultimately, researchers are at the heart of everything we do at ACS,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “We’ve spent many years innovating new programs and operations to ensure we are leading the way in creating the open access solutions our authors need. These new programs are an ambitious start to a year in which we will continue to expand ways to serve our author and researcher communities.”