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Scholarly Communications

American Chemical Society (ACS)

American Chemical Society (ACS)

The Claremont Colleges, as a member of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), is part of a read-and-publish agreement between the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the University of California, California State University, and SCELC institutions. This agreement allows Claremont - affiliated authors to publish their articles Open Access in many ACS journals at no cost to themselves.

This agreement covers the Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Claremont Colleges authors whose research articles are accepted for publication in applicable ACS journals during the three-year agreement, although authors with grant funding to cover open publication charges will be asked to use those funds to pay a discounted APC where possible. By doing so, they will enable authors without funding to publish Open Access in ACS journals under this agreement.

Please read on for information to determine if your research publication is eligible and to learn how to take advantage of this opportunity.

Author Eligibility:

To be eligible, articles must:

* Authors choosing to publish open access under this agreement will retain copyright and be able to choose between a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) or Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license.

How the Process works:

This agreement employs a multi-payer model where authors are encouraged, but not required, to use grant funds to cover a discounted Article Processing Charge (APC) of $3,000. The APCs for authors without grant funding (or who decline to use it) are covered by the library's subscription fees at no cost to the authors.

The full deal will take effect July 1, 2022 and last through 2025 (dependent on meeting agreement-wide semiannual grant-funded APC thresholds). If you are an eligible corresponding author and you select the open access option in ACS’s Journal Publishing Agreement system after your article has been accepted, you will be asked whether or not you have research funds to pay for open access publishing. After selecting either option (“yes” or “no”), you will receive an invitation to log into the payment processing system used by ACS, CCC RightsLink, to complete the process.

It is necessary to set up an account in RightsLink first; if you do not have an account, you will be prompted to create one.

Then click through the following steps in the RightsLink system: 

Indicate whether research funds are available to pay the author’s portion of the article processing charge.

  • If you have the research funds to pay the $3,000 APC, select “Bill me” in CCC RightsLink and proceed to enter the billing details.
  • If you do NOT have research funds to pay the $3,000 APC, select “Seek funding” in CCC RightsLink to route your request to the libraries' subscription pool. You do not need to contact your campus’s library to make the funding request. Your request will be processed within one business day, and if approved, your charge will be paid in full by the library. 
  • You will then also be asked to identify why total funding is needed, choosing from a menu of options (e.g., the research is not grant-funded, and you have no other funding sources available; the grant budget did not include money for publishing, etc.).

Additional information: