ACS Sponsors Open Access Publishing for Authors at Qualifying Primarily Undergraduate Institutions

In January 2023, ACS Publications launched a new program aimed at increasing Open Access (OA) equity at undergraduate colleges and universities. These “Primarily Undergraduate Institutions” (PUIs)—which do not offer advanced degrees in the chemical sciences—produce excellent research, but they often lack the resources and funding to make their outputs available as OA.

This ACS Sponsored Program for PUIs empowers corresponding authors affiliated with a participating PUI by automatically giving them the option to publish their research OA in any ACS journal—completely free of charge. This program was also carefully developed to so as not to create undue administrative overhead for library staff.

The program is available to any PUI that doesn’t offer graduate degrees in the sciences and that subscribes to the ACS All Publications Package. This offer lasts the duration of the institution’s subscription, with no limit on the number of research articles that can be published open access during that time.

The initiative was an overnight success: at the time of launch, more than 100 PUIs were automatically enrolled in the program, and this number has since grown to 176. Within the first six months of the program’s launch, more than 30 articles from 28 PUIs have been published OA across ACS Publications’ journal portfolio—with many more currently undergoing peer review.

Does Your Institution Participate?

This program helps institutions sustainably support the transition to open science by growing the amount of work authors at PUIs can publish completely free of charge under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 open access license. Publishing your work under this program also helps meet the public access requirements of many research funders.

Not yet enrolled? To find out if your organization qualifies, or to participate, please ask your librarian to contact their institutional sales representative or email ACS_Pubs_Assist@acs.org.

If you’re a librarian at a PUI that doesn’t yet participate and are interested in joining the program, please contact us. All PUIs qualify to participate in this program. Even if your organization does not qualify as a PUI, we can review options for open access publishing support at your institution.