ACS signs innovative North American open access agreement with MIT

WASHINGTON, March 19, 2020 — The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries today announced a new and innovative agreement, which will advance key elements of open access.

Through this agreement, all ACS journal articles with MIT-affiliated corresponding authors will be made open access. The associated accepted manuscripts will be automatically deposited into MIT’s open access repository, as called for under MIT’s Framework for Publisher Contracts, and in a manner consistent with ACS publishing policies. In addition, a number of the final published papers (the version of record) will also be made open on the ACS publishing platform at no additional cost to individual authors.

Together, these two complementary and sustainable pathways to open access advance the MIT Faculty Open Access Policy’s aim to “disseminate the fruits of [the faculty’s] research and scholarship as widely as possible.” The terms of the agreement add a new service of ACS-managed auto-deposit to the existing pathways ACS has developed to advance open access. This approach will support researchers at MIT in efficiently making their work openly accessible, as called for in the policy. The direct deposit automation is a value-added service unique to ACS’ agreement with MIT and aligns with a key element of MIT’s framework.

“This is a great example of an agreement that meets the needs of MIT scholars and advances the progress of science,” says Chris Bourg, Ph.D., director of MIT Libraries. “We are especially pleased that ACS has agreed to develop and implement an auto-deposit service for institutional repositories, which is a core principle of the MIT framework.”

“We are excited to announce this agreement with MIT in this latest example of ACS’ commitment to advancing open science,” says James Milne, Ph.D., president, ACS Publications Division. “Researchers at MIT perform some of the most cutting-edge research in the world, and this agreement will help disseminate this knowledge more broadly.”

In the last year, ACS has supported the growing global interest in open access agreements and to date has partnered across 10 countries and with nearly 200 institutions worldwide, including Germany’s Max Planck Institutes, the U.K.’s JISC consortia, the Austrian Academic Library Consortium, the Austrian Science Fund, and the Bibsam Consortium in Sweden. ACS continues to provide researcher-centric solutions — programs designed to stimulate participation in open access publication across the global community of authors, researchers and ACS members.

The MIT Libraries advance knowledge at MIT and beyond by providing a trusted foundation for the generation, dissemination, use, creative engagement with and preservation of information. The Libraries envision a world where enduring, abundant, equitable and meaningful access to knowledge serves to empower and inspire humanity.

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.

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