Publishing Open Access: A Guide for Researchers

Publishing open access for the first time can be daunting for researchers, even as a growing number of funders and institutions adopt policies requiring authors to make their research outputs available with no charge for readers. To mark International Open Access Week 2027, we’ve produced a step-by-step guide for authors, detailing the open access process in ACS Publications journals.

1. Identify Requirements

Before you submit your manuscript, you need to understand what specific requirements your funder and institution have. For example, you may be required to publish in a fully open access journal, use a specific Creative Commons license, or upload a copy of your accepted manuscript to a repository as soon as the final article is published.

If you’re in charge of the submission process on behalf of an author team, then you also need to be aware of all your co-authors’ requirements too — there may be differing requirements that you need to account for.

2. Identify Costs

Open access typically requires the costs of publication to be covered either by the corresponding author, their institution, or research funder.

ACS Publications provides an open access estimation tool to help you identify the cost of open access options, including the availability of various discounts.

3. Identify Funding

You’ve confirmed the specific requirements that you need to meet when publishing your manuscript, and the costs involved for open access. Now you can identify how those costs may be covered.

Your institution may be one of the 2,000+ covered by an ACS institutional OA agreement — if you’re not sure, you can search here. Your agreement’s information page will inform you which ACS Publications journals are covered.

4. Submit Your Manuscript

When you’re confident that your chosen journal meets all the requirements for you and any co-authors, and you've identified how applicable open access fees will be paid, it’s time to make sure your manuscript and supporting files are ready. Check the relevant guidelines for your chosen ACS Publications journal here, and then log into the ACS Publishing Center to submit your article.

5. Complete Your Submission

As part of the submission process, you'll be asked if you are required to comply with any open access mandates. If your funder or institution requires you to publish OA, select 'yes' here.

If you select 'yes', you'll be asked how you intend to pay OA charges. You just need to select the option that matches the route to OA that you identified in step 3.

Your responses here don't restrict your choices later on in the publishing journey. These questions are designed to encourage authors to think about OA funding early in the process.

6. Progress Through Article Development

After your manuscript has been submitted and passed initial desk review, it will be sent for peer review. You can find out more about what happens during this stage in our behind-the-scenes look at ACS Publications.

7. Complete Your Journal Publishing Agreement

When your final article has been accepted for publication, you will be asked to sign the Journal Publishing Agreement. This is the point where you’ll confirm that you wish to publish under your institution’s open access agreement (if available) or purchase open access with an article publishing charge (APC) using grant or personal funds. You can use our Open Access Estimator tool to get an initial idea of potential APC costs.

8. Confirm Administrator Approval or Payment

If you are publishing using an OA agreement, your institution may have a manual approval process. In these cases, Your administrator will receive a message that funding review is necessary for your manuscript, and you will receive a notification when action has been taken on the funding request.

If you are paying the APC using grant or personal funds, you'll be taken to our eCommerce partner at this step. If you’re eligible for any discounts, these can be applied during the checkout process.

9. Publish Your Article

Publication of your final article will occur as soon as payment is resolved, whether that’s through an institutional OA agreement or other funding routes. At this point, you and any co-authors are free at this time to deposit the accepted manuscript version — meaning if your funder requires your accepted manuscript to be placed in a repository, you can upload it at this point. Your grant terms, or your grant officer, will be able to confirm which repository to use, as well as detailing any further requirements.

Open Science Made Simple: A Webinar Series

We recently discussed the open access process during a webinar, “Publishing Open Access with ACS Publications,” the first in our three-part Open Science Made Simple series. Register for free to attend live sessions or watch the recordings on demand.