Why the Research Community is Choosing Open Access with ACS

In our Open Science Conversations series, we speak with librarians and researchers around the world about their experiences with open science and open access (OA) publishing. Over the past 18 months, these conversations have provided valuable insights into the motivations, challenges, and opportunities shaping the global growth of OA.

As we look back on this series, a clear picture emerges: institutions and authors alike see OA as an essential part of how research is communicated today, and how it will evolve in the future. In this post, we’ll explore some of the common themes that have surfaced in these interviews, highlighting why so many are choosing OA with ACS Publications.

In this article:
Institutions: Driving Access and Impact
Authors: Sharing Research Without Limits
Looking Ahead: The Future of Open Access
A Common Theme: OA as an Essential Part of Research Communication

Institutions: Driving Access and Impact

For institutions, the decision to embrace OA is often rooted in a commitment to advancing research and increasing its impact. Librarians consistently point to several key drivers:

Expanding reach and visibility: OA makes it easier for researchers to share their work widely, ensuring that findings are accessible to anyone who can benefit from them — whether they’re in academia, industry, the public sector, or even to inform members of the public.

“I think that open science is essential in helping the whole world collaborate on the biggest challenges that we face and that we cannot solve as individuals...”
– Louise Otting, Delft University of Technology

Supporting national and institutional research communication strategies: in many cases, OA adoption aligns with broader goals. Some countries have national mandates to increase OA publishing, while universities often include OA in their strategic plans for research dissemination, demonstrating the value that they offer their communities and the wider world:

“[Our agreement with ACS makes it] easy for researchers to make their work open access, and it allows members of the public to access science that they couldn’t before, which promotes the dissemination of scientific knowledge. This aligns with our institution’s commitment to advancing research and increasing its impact.”
– Dr. Honxia Duan, Eindoven University of Technology

Removing barriers to access: financial and digital equity remain pressing concerns. By removing paywalls for readers, OA helps level the playing field for institutions with limited resources to acquire access to research, enabling readers everywhere to engage with the latest science:

“The highest priority to me in open access is the underlying value of true accessibility: presenting advances of knowledge, of science, of arts, in ways that are available globally and regardless of participation in privileged groups or privileged institutions.”
– Alison Bradley, Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI)

These priorities came through strongly in our conversations with librarians such as Hongxia Duan, Louise Otting, Sue Cardinal, and Alison Bradley, who each emphasized the role of institutional agreements in making OA practical and sustainable. These agreements not only simplify the publishing process for authors but also ensure that costs are managed between funders and institutions in a way that supports long-term access.

Authors: Sharing Research Without Limits

For authors, the motivations for choosing OA are equally compelling, and often deeply personal.

Reaching the widest possible audience: many researchers see OA as a way to maximize the visibility and impact of their work. In some cases, OA articles have been featured in institutional or ACS press releases, amplifying their reach even further. Authors noted that OA is particularly valuable for readers at less well-funded institutions, who might not otherwise have access to subscription content:

“We need to read others’ works to get ideas...Open access opens those doors, especially to researchers at smaller institutions.”
– Dr. Kristine Horvat, University of New Haven

Supporting early career researchers: visibility matters, especially for those at the start of their careers. Several interviewees highlighted how OA can help establish a researcher’s reputation by making their work more discoverable by peers and potential collaborators across the world:

“When I go to a conference and meet people, I'm asked if my articles are available in open access…I have had people thank me for publishing open access, and I have to say that it's thanks to our institution…signing these agreements with publishers, because it is only possible because of them.”
– Dr. Rubén Mendoza-Cruz, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Efficiency and ease of the process: authors appreciate the streamlined process for publishing OA under their institutional agreements. For some, the simplicity of opting into OA was a deciding factor in choosing to submit to ACS journals:

“My institution has [an OA agreement] with ACS and some other publishers...[which is] a real advantage. I find it much better to know that the work is out there, and everyone can read it without paywalls. That's really an attractive thing to me as an author, and definitely affects our thinking about where to submit papers.”
– Dr. Matt McDowell, Georgia Institute of Technology

Meeting mandates and upholding public responsibility: for many authors, OA is not just a preference – their institution or research funder requires them to publish their findings in the form of open access articles. Researchers also recognize the importance of making publicly funded research accessible to all. However, some expressed concerns about the impact on research budgets if institutional agreements aren’t in place for the future, underscoring the need for funders to provide suitable financial assistance in meeting the targets they set for OA:

“All the funding agencies in the US…are really pushing for open access for all publications which makes sense. Absolutely the government should be making the science that they fund available to taxpayers. But there's no budget for it—so for instance, I'm submitting a grant proposal in the next month, and we have enough spare after we pay our graduate students to pay for one open access article. That's all we can afford in the grant.”
– Prof. David W. McCamant, University of Rochester

Looking Ahead: The Future of Open Access

Every interview in the series included a question about the future of OA. While predictions varied, several common threads emerged:

Building sustainable models: many interviewees emphasized the importance of forging strong relationships between publishers and institutions to develop models that balance accessibility with sustainability:

“I believe…we're going to have [new OA funding] model—and it's likely not going to be with the authors. I think the institutions and the funding agencies are the ones that are going to figure it out.”
– Sue Cardinal, University of Rochester

Responding to policy changes: U.S. public access requirements are expected to accelerate OA adoption. Institutional agreements will play an instrumental role in helping authors comply with these mandates, which also include provisions for open data. Some interviewees noted the logistical challenges of sharing large datasets (which, in some fields, can sometimes reach terabytes in size), highlighting the need for practical solutions:

“In my simulation community, one of the current challenges is that molecular simulations have been generating larger and larger data sets…These can be tens or even hundreds of terabytes in size, and they're very valuable for the scientific community to analyze with their own methods. Currently there's no straightforward way to share these large data sets except for repositories where one can upload data for just a few pathways generated by a simulation.”
– Prof. Lilian Chong, University of Pittsburgh

OA as the default: there is widespread hope that OA will become the standard for research dissemination, with exceptions only for cases involving intellectual property or sensitive data:

“I think it's the default for scientists now to go open access…I think everything should be OA. The more that's OA, the better.”
– Dr. Mariolino Carta, Swansea University

The role of preprints: while chemistry has been slower to adopt preprints compared to other disciplines, several respondents expect preprints to become a more prominent part of the publishing landscape, particularly as a way to accelerate the initial communication of results:

"I think [preprints are] a really good development, because sometimes the review process can take quite a long time after you've submitted a paper. Posting a preprint means that you're getting your work out there earlier.”
– Prof. Rebecca Malen, Cardiff University

A Common Theme: OA as an Essential Part of Research Communication

Across all these conversations, one message stands out: OA has become an essential and expected part of how research is shared and advanced. Institutional OA agreements have been instrumental in driving this growth, making it easier for authors to publish openly and for institutions to support their researchers.

As ACS Publications continues to expand its OA offerings and partnerships, we remain committed to working with the global research community to build a future where science is accessible to all.