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Santa Clara UniversityUniversity Library

Transformative Agreements

Here you will find information about SCU's transformative agreements, agreements that allow SCU-affiliated authors to publish Open Access articles at no cost

American Chemical Society logo - "Chemistry for Life"

Participating Journals

All 79 subscription-based and fully open access ACS Journals

What is the cost to the author?

No additional cost to author. A discounted APC of $3,000 is also available through this agreement if there are associated grant or research funds to cover the cost of OA publication.

Publishing Workflow

Articles accepted after July 1, 2022 are eligible for both the discounted APC of $3,000 and the option for full funding of the APC from the collective subscription pool. 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, including: 

Indicate whether you have research funds 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 have your request routed to the libraries' subscription pool. You do not need to contact your campus’ 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 libraries. 
    • You will then also be asked to identify the reason that full funding is needed, choosing from a menu of options (e.g., the research is not grant-funded and you have no other sources of funding available; the grant budget did not include money for publishing; etc.)

Who Can Publish?

Corresponding faculty, lecturer, staff, and student authors at subscribing institutions.

If you (1) are the article’s corresponding author, (2) choose to publish your article open access in an ACS journal, and (3) are an affiliated researcher (faculty, lecturer, staff, student) at one of SCELCs [[subscribing institutions]], your article is covered under this agreement which will make it more cost effective for you to publish OA. The agreement also continues to provide reading access to ACS journals for all all affiliated researchers.

Which Article types qualify?

Article types vary by journal and eligibility is determined by journal editorial staff