Louisiana State University Libraries and The Publications Division of the American Chemical Society (ACS) have announced a transformative open access agreement. The one-year agreement with ACS will provide financial support for up to 28 LSU-affiliated corresponding authors who publish articles under an open access license in any of ACS’s journals. The agreement also provides LSU affiliates access to read ACS journals.

A “transformative agreement” is one that transforms the traditional scholarly publishing model of paying to read journals to one that provides more open access reading by shifting the costs to article processing charges (APCs). The terms of the agreement include the potential to make a significant number of articles from LSU open access in ACS journals, increasing the reach and accessibility of LSU research.

“We are the first research institution in North America to reach a transformative agreement with the ACS. This groundbreaking agreement is a significant development for the Libraries’ strategies to build systems that support scholarship and to advocate for and organize open access adoption among faculty and graduate students,” says Stanley Wilder, Dean of LSU Libraries.

Previously, LSU researchers like Noémie Elgrishi, assistant professor of chemistry and head of her research group, had to choose between not publishing open access or finding extra funds to cover author publishing charges to have their research published in open access ACS journals.

"The ACS publishes some of the most influential journals in Chemistry," says Elgrishi, "Most of them publish using a hybrid model in which papers are not open access except if the authors pay a fee, so most researchers could not publish open access in ACS journals. This new agreement is a game-changer! Open access will now be realistic and could become the default option. This is fantastic as it will increase the reach of the groundbreaking chemistry research done at LSU."