Transformative Journals Support for Funders
More publishing options for your researchers
Many research funders aim to increase the amount of research articles that are available to the public. ACS is committed to an open science future, and this includes working with institutions and research funders to make this a reality.
As of May 2022, all of ACS’ hybrid journals – publications which include a mix of open access and subscription content – are classified as Transformative Journals under Plan S. The main features of a transformative journal include:
- A long-term commitment to becoming fully open access, ‘flipping’ when publishing a minimum of 75% open access content
- Regular, transparent reporting to authors on the performance of their article – including views, downloads, and other usage information
- Advocating the benefits of open access to researchers and institutions
- Full pricing transparency, including reporting on how article processing charges are offset against subscription prices until the journal becomes fully open access
- Providing authors with a range of publication models so they can meet the requirements of their institutions and funders
ACS transformative journal calculations
The data linked below identifies the open access publication targets for each ACS transformative journal in 2022, based on 2021 data.
Please note: Plan S targets are based on an absolute percentage of articles published in a journal under a CC BY license within a specific year. The totals shown in the final column of the spreadsheet are calculated based on 2021 papers – if a journal publishes more or fewer articles in 2022 than in 2021, the actual number of open access papers will be subject to change.
ACS Transformative Journal Targets
ACS Transformative Journal Report: 2023
Summary of 2022-23 transformative journal performance
- 28/64 journals hit TJ target (44%)
- 14 journals missed their TJ target by 1%
- 22 journals missed their TJ target by >1%
- Total OA growth in hybrid (CC BY licensed content only) from 8 to 10%
- Total OA growth in hybrid from 12 to 14% on all CC licensed content (including CC BY-NC-ND)
- Total OA growth in hybrid from Europe from 41% in 2021 to 51% in 2022; all other continents stayed flat at 4% from 2021 to 2022
- Over our total portfolio (including OA journals), open access accounted for 21% of our published content, up from 18% in 2021
Transparent pricing
ACS Publication strives to set fair prices for its journals and to avoid customers paying a subscription fee for content that has become Open Access (OA) through article publishing charges (APCs).
For journals that publish both subscription and OA articles, the journal’s subscription list price is affected only by changes in non-OA content. Open access articles are not considered when setting the subscription price, nor are APCs affected by non-OA articles. Subscription prices use downloads as one aspect as well. All downloads associated with open access are excluded from any pricing calculation.
We consider a number of other factors when setting subscription prices, changes in the number of journals, issues, etc., usage patterns, costs, and other economic factors.