ACS-Sponsored Open Access Publishing for PUIs

Find my institution

If you are associated with any of the Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs) listed below and are the submitting corresponding author, you may have the opportunity to publish your research in any ACS journal under a CC BY open access license free of charge. This is available for the duration of your institution’s subscription to the ACS All Publications Package. Learn how to publish your next paper OA.

All PUIs qualify to participate in this program. Don’t see your institution? Ask your librarian or your department chair to contact us. Even if your organization does not qualify as a PUI, we can review options for open access publishing support at your institution.

How do I publish?

Step 1

Submit your article to the ACS journal of your choice, making sure you are the submitting corresponding author.

Step 2

Ensure your institution affiliation is correct on your profile in the ACS Paragon Plus submission system.

Step 3

When your manuscript has been accepted for publication, you will be automatically prompted with the option to publish open access under the ACS Sponsored Read & Publish agreement.

Step 4

Confirm that “Yes, I wish to publish open access as per the agreement” is checked, and complete the Journal Publishing Agreement.

Step 5

Your article will be made immediately available as open access upon publication under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. There are no charges to pay and no further action required by either you or your institution.

Video demonstration

This demo video shows you how to navigate the Journal Publishing Agreement assistant and publish your research open access under your institutional open access agreement:

Automatic article deposit in PubMed Central

Authors who elect to publish open access will automatically have their final published article sent for deposit in PubMed Central. Authors publishing open access under this agreement are also free to deposit the version of record in their institutional and/or research funder’s designated open access repository.

Immediate public access to research

Some research funders, including all federal funding agencies in the United States, require authors to make a version of their research article available in a public open access repository immediately upon publication.

You may see this referred to as ‘zero-embargo green open access’.

If you receive any type of funding from a US federal agency such as the Department of Energy or National Institutes of Health, or any other funding organization with a zero-embargo green open access policy, then your funder may require you to make a version of your manuscript available in an open access repository immediately upon publication. You will need to check the terms of your grant, and/or communicate with your grant officer, to confirm if such a policy applies to your work.

Publishing open access through your institution’s read and publish agreement is compliant with these mandates. ACS Publications will automatically submit the version of record of your article to PubMed Central, and you and your co-authors are free to post it to any other repository or service required by your funder(s). Combined with public access to your research data, this will ensure compliance with any applicable zero-embargo green open access policy.

For authors who do not already benefit from a read and publish agreement, ACS Publications’ zero-embargo green open access option expands the choices beyond the free 12-month embargo route for those authors to comply with funder mandates by posting their accepted manuscript with a CC BY license to a repository immediately upon acceptance, following payment of an article development charge (ADC).