Plan S Compliance

ACS and Plan S Compliance

Many ACS authors receive funding from one or more members of cOAlition S. These authors may be required to publish their work immediately open access under a CC BY license. ACS offers a wide range of options enabling our authors to comply with these requirements through publication in a fully open access journal or our transformative journals, or through our zero-embargo green open access option. In addition, an author’s institution may have signed an ACS read and publish agreement that provides funding for open access publishing.

Publishing in compliance with Plan S requirements

The most straightforward way to comply with the requirements of Plan S is through gold open access publication in fully open access journal under a CC BY license. This makes the published version of record immediately accessible and usable in a variety of ways. Many institutions or funders ensure that their researchers’ open access publication fees are covered. Authors can check if their institution participates in an ACS read and publish agreement by searching our list of current agreements.

Plan S Rights Retention Strategy

All ACS journals provide authors with a gold open access option. On this basis, ACS authors can comply with cOAlition S requirements by publishing gold OA under a CC BY license. This makes the published version of record immediately accessible, which is the preferred mechanism for cOAlition S members. For authors selecting the subscription publication route, our standard self-archiving policies apply, including an embargo period of 12 months. We also offer a zero-embargo green open access option for authors who wish to, or are required to, make their accepted manuscript immediately available in an open access repository upon publication.

The Journal Publishing Agreement authors sign to publish with ACS allows for retention of copyright when publishing under a CC BY license.