ACS Publications and Open Science

Supporting open science

Open science is a collection of movements that aim to expand the transparency of, and access to, all aspects of the research process beyond the traditional peer reviewed article. Open science encompasses open data and code, open peer review, preprints, open access to publications, and more. This expansion supports a global effort to encourage widespread collaboration and scientific exploration and aims to amplify the beneficial impact of primary research on society.

ACS Publications’ support for open science includes the adoption of an open data policy across all of our journals (please see each journal’s information page for details about the applicable policy). We have also introduced the ACS Chemistry Databank to help authors provide long-term open access to their research data.

Authors can also post preprints of their research prior to submission to an ACS Publications journal. ACS is one of the supporting societies for ChemRxiv, the premier preprint server for chemistry.

Authors can submit to ACS journals directly from ChemRxiv. Learn more about the direct journal transfer program here.

Supporting open access

ACS Publications’ mission is to provide high-quality information products and services that advance the practice of the chemical and related sciences. We aim to provide a worldwide audience with access to the most trusted, most cited, and most read information in science.

Key to this is our support for open access. This includes a variety of programs that are designed to help institutions meet the open access needs of their authors, including a wide range of institutional open access agreements.

In addition to a diamond open access journal – ACS Central Science – which is completely free for readers and authors, ACS publishes a range of fully open access journals, which exclusively contain immediate ‘gold’ open access articles. We also publish more than 80 hybrid journals. These journals publish a combination of open access and subscription content, meaning authors can choose from different routes to open access:

• Immediate gold open access to the version of record, either through a read and publish agreement or by paying an APC with grant or personal funds
• Immediate green open access to the accepted manuscript, either through a read and green agreement or by paying an article development charge using grant or personal funds
• Embargoed green open access to the accepted manuscript 12 months after publication, at no cost

Authors publishing open access with ACS Publications may choose between two types of Creative Commons licenses for their research articles.

For more information on ACS’ publishing policies, visit the ACS Researcher Resources website.