The University of Iowa Libraries has entered into an agreement with the American Chemical Society (ACS) to bundle the cost of journal subscriptions and Open Access (OA) publishing. Under this three-year contract, UI corresponding authors can publish their journal articles Open Access and free of cost to them in any ACS journal. These articles can then be immediately read by anyone, anywhere, without the paywalls that traditionally accompany academic journals. Under this agreement, UI authors can publish a significant number of articles OA, but not an unlimited number.

This arrangement is part of a larger effort by UI Libraries to reduce the cost of OA for individual researchers. Unfortunately, publishers often charge authors directly to pay for the cost of publishing OA journal articles. (For instance, ACS normally charges authors $4,500 per article for OA.) For faculty who don’t have grant or departmental funding, this can be prohibitively expensive. These costs have soared in recent years and are a significant barrier to making research open and freely accessible.  

For more information, contact Conrad Bendixen, or Leo Clougherty from the Sciences Library.