American Chemical Society and Max Planck Institutes partner on transformative open access plan

WASHINGTON, March 29, 2019 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG) announced today a collaborative open access strategic partnership that will advance shared goals for open science and enhance convenience for the MPG researcher and author community. Effective from the outset of 2019, the four-year transformative agreement provides researchers affiliated with Max Planck institutes the opportunity to disseminate immediately, under an open access license, 100 percent of their research articles upon acceptance and publication by a peer-reviewed ACS journal. MPG researchers also benefit from full reader access to all ACS Publications journals and Chemical & Engineering News.

Of particular importance under the new agreement is that individual authors from any of the Max Planck institutes will no longer need to arrange direct payment of open access publication fees. Instead, their publishing costs will be supported through the “read and publish” arrangement between ACS and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), with processing of licensing transactions handled seamlessly with ACS through novel eCommerce functionality it has implemented jointly with the Copyright Clearance Center.

The agreement is a notable development in open access publishing for ACS, as well as for the Max Planck Society’s own transition strategy. “ACS is among the most-relevant publishers for Max Planck Society researchers; this new agreement is an exciting opportunity for our authors to achieve the greatest visibility possible by publishing their accepted articles open access within the ACS journals that they highly value,” says Gerard Meijer, Ph.D., director of the Max Planck Society’s Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin. Ralf Schimmer, Ph.D., head of Information Provision at MPDL adds, “This is an exemplary illustration of how scholarly societies can partner with libraries to test new economic models that enable societies to continue their precious contributions to science while transitioning to a future-oriented model of scholarly communication. This new agreement with the ACS is another important milestone in our broader open access transformation strategy and enables the MPDL to convert former subscription expenditures into funds that, instead, support open access publishing, in line with the Open Access 2020 Initiative.”

The partnership represents a significant milestone as ACS progressively develops its established and significant suite of open access publishing options and author services. “We are committed to supporting researchers in publishing open access in the journal of their choice, while ensuring the quality, reliability and preservation of the scholarly record,” says James Milne, Ph.D., senior vice president, Journals Publishing Group at ACS Publications. “This agreement with the Max Planck Society ensures their world-class researchers can publish in any ACS journal, knowing that their research will benefit from being among the ‘most-cited, most-trusted and most-read’ scientific publications worldwide.”

Beyond this new partnership, ACS Publications offers to all authors a range of flexible choices by which to publish open access: https://pubs.acs.org/publish. For a number of years, ACS Publications has been actively engaged in developing researcher-centric arrangements with institutions and funders to sponsor article publishing charges on behalf of authors. Through these various options, authors have published more than 20,000 open access articles within ACS journals during the past five years.

About the Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science is an independent, non-profit research organization. Focusing on research fields that are particularly innovative, the 83 Max Planck Institutes conduct basic research in the service of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. More than 15,000 studies by its researchers are published each year in internationally renowned scientific journals.

About the American Chemical Society

The American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, is a not-for-profit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS is a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. ACS does not conduct research, but publishes and publicizes peer-reviewed scientific studies. Through its Publications Division, the Society publishes more than 50 peer-reviewed journals and eBooks. ACS journals are among the most-cited, most-trusted and most-read within the scientific literature. The Publications Division offers high-quality service to authors and readers, including rapid time to publication, cutting-edge web and mobile delivery platforms and comprehensive open-access options. The Society’s main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

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