ACS’ open access publishing options for CSU authors will change effective July 1, 2025. Authors who wish to publish open access with ACS will be responsible for fully covering the discounted $3,000 Article Processing Charge (APC). Reading access to ACS publications for CSU affiliates will continue without interruption.
Why this decision was made:
This is a shared agreement including 60 public and private institutions across California. Cost containment has always been a top priority for CSU’s open access agreements. The current agreement with ACS was built on the assumption that if authors with research funds available to pay the open access publication fee could help to shoulder their costs, the libraries could stretch their limited financial resources to make open access publication an option for those authors without available funds. Unfortunately, the percentage of authors contributing research funds toward APCs has decreased to levels well below other California agreements operating on a similar principle. The resulting cost increases to the libraries under the model are proving to be unsustainable, and we have been unable to find an alternate pathway with ACS that would sustain a library-supported open access publishing option.
How this change will affect CSU researchers:
● Reading access to ACS publications will continue without interruption.
● Authors who publish in ACS journals will still be able to make their articles open access, but starting July 1, 2025, full funding support will no longer be available through the libraries. Authors will be responsible for covering a single, discounted article processing charge (APC) of $3,000.
Existing open access publishing agreements with other publishers are unaffected. For researchers who publish in journals covered under these other agreements, open access funding support continues to be available from the CSU libraries, and we encourage authors to take advantage of it.