At ACS Publications, we know it is important for you to be sharing your work, which has been peer-reviewed and published, with colleagues in the global community of scientists. As sharing on sites known as scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s scholarly research ecosystem, we would like to remind you of […]

Sharing Your Work Published with ACS

At ACS Publications, we know it is important for you to be sharing your work, which has been peer-reviewed and published, with colleagues in the global community of scientists. As sharing on sites known as scholarly collaboration networks (SCNs) is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s scholarly research ecosystem, we would like to remind you of the many ways in which you, a valued ACS author, can go about effectively sharing your work published with ACS.

The American Chemical Society is participating in a broad initiative, along with other scientific societies and scholarly publishers, to encourage scholarly sharing within online collaboration networks. This initiative is based on a core set of principles to which scientific, technical, and medical publishers and various scholarly collaboration networks are being asked to agree on a voluntary basis. ACS has agreed to those voluntary principles, which clarify how, where and what types of content may be shared by researchers in a manner that is compliant with copyright. You may find the Voluntary Principles summarized on a website called How Can I Share It which offers an overview of available sharing platforms and outlines how and where you can share your publications responsibly.

Examples of scientific collaboration networks that have signed up to the voluntary principles for article sharing include our own ACS ChemWorx, Figshare, AAAS’ Trellis, ReadCube, and Mendeley, among others. Unfortunately, some content sharing networks currently choose to operate outside these guidelines, by openly posting copyrighted articles, or enabling researchers to do so, without obtaining appropriate permissions or licenses. Please be aware that when the material is found on such sites that infringe ACS copyright or the publishing agreements between ACS and its authors, it is subject to removal.

Here are some ways that ACS enables you to share your work openly with the global scientific community:

#1: Publish Open Access with ACS Publications

Publishing open access under an ACS AuthorChoice license is an easy and straightforward way to share your research with a wide audience. Available for all ACS journals, ACS AuthorChoice offers flexible open access license options that provide unrestricted access to the final published article from the ACS Publications website, and also enable you to post the final published article on non-commercial websites, such as institutional repositories. You can choose to make your published article immediately available or open access after 12 months for a one-time payment—with substantial discounts provided to ACS members and authors whose institutions subscribe to our Society’s journals. As always, you retain all the rights granted to you under the terms of your Journal Publishing Agreement with ACS. To learn more, visit www.acsopenaccess.org.

Please note that If you wish to post your published article on a commercial content sharing site, ACS AuthorChoice provides a specific open access option that includes a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Under that license, others are allowed to use and modify the final published article for commercial as well as non-commercial purposes. The CC-BY option also is discounted for ACS members.

#2: Use Free ACS Articles on Request Links to Point Readers to Your Article

We encourage you to freely share your work by using your ACS Articles on Request links, which enable readers free access to your published article at our website. This unique link is emailed to each Corresponding Author during the publication process and can also be found in your ACS ChemWorx profile. The link may be emailed to colleagues interested in your work, added to your ORCID or other personal profile, and freely posted by you on content sharing sites such as institutional repositories and scholarly collaboration networks. The ACS Articles on Request link enables you to share 50 free downloads within the first year after publication; after that first year, open reader access via the link is unlimited.

#3: Exercise the Rights Granted in Your ACS Journal Publishing Agreement

There are many ways in which your Journal Publishing Agreement with the American Chemical Society enables sharing your work published in ACS journals with your colleagues. Here are just a few:

  • Deposit a copy of your accepted peer-reviewed manuscript to online repositories for non-commercial purposes;
  • Present orally or otherwise display all or part of your work in presentations at meeting and conferences, and share your work in teaching or in-house training materials;
  • Share your data.*

We hope that the information we have provided in this communication will help you in sharing your work widely with your colleagues, and we thank you for choosing to publish with ACS. We are committed to maximizing the dissemination of your published research to the global scientific community and look forward to continuing our collaboration with you.

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