Discover how institutional open access agreements are transforming research publishing, making it easier for authors to meet funder mandates, expand their reach, and publish with impact.
Open access (OA) is increasingly important for researchers—it provides the greatest possible reach for their published work, as readers can access it without subscription.
Part of this growing importance is because the number of research funding bodies that either recommend or require some form of OA to research outputs is growing each year. As an example, authors in the US that receive federal funding will soon be required to provide immediate public access to their work.
In practice, this means the author will need to deposit their accepted manuscript in an open access repository (such as PubMed Central or PAGES) as soon as the version of record is published. Making the version of record available as OA also meets these requirements, as it can then be uploaded to a repository upon publication.
For more information on how we're supporting US researchers with public access mandates, see our recent article.
The role of institutional OA agreements
Institutional OA agreements have been instrumental in increasing OA uptake around the world. This began in Europe, where there's been longstanding support for OA by several governments—research institutions in these countries have often been supported with centralized government funding to set up agreements with publishers. ACS Publications has many nationwide OA agreements covering most or all major academic research institutions in their respective countries, and the impact of these is clear:
In many cases, these agreements have had a significant effect on the proportion of academic research that's available as OA, rising to 80% or more of that nation's scholarly output in ACS Publications journals within two years of the agreement starting.
Increased reach, collaboration, and convenience
At the level of individual researchers, we also know how important these agreements are in helping them publish in their first choice of journal.
If you've been following our Open Science Conversations series, you'll have seen in our discussions with leading researchers how they value OA when publishing in ACS journals: these publications have a strong reach to the authors' preferred audiences, and their ability to make their research articles immediately available as OA upon publication has enabled them to meet their funder's requirements.
In several cases, the wider visibility of their work has led to new collaborations, and the simple opt-in to publishing under their institutional agreement removes the need to complete paperwork or seek multiple approvals. The agreements make OA publishing fast and easy, and—as more than one interviewee put it—a straightforward and obvious decision.
Growing open access around the world
ACS Publications is committed to growing sustainable routes to OA in partnership with institutions worldwide. This has resulted in the number of institutions covered by one of our agreements increasing from 125 in 2019 to over 1,700 as of mid 2025.
As part of this, we're continuing to work with many US institutions to find a route that enables simple OA support for their authors—we already have read and publish agreements covering hundreds of institutions across the US, as well as over 100 read and green agreements—and growing—with universities and colleges throughout the country.
If you represent an institution and you'd like to discuss how we can help your researchers meet their OA needs via an institutional OA agreement, contact us.
If you're an author and you'd like to see if your institution is covered by an OA agreement, you can use our agreement lookup tool.