Three chemistry societies have new open access options for MIT authors that allow for open access publication without any fee.

American Chemical Society/ACS: ACS’s open access strategy includes:

• ACS Author Rewards, through which corresponding authors can apply credits gained by publishing articles with ACS towards open access fees, allowing authors to publish some articles open access at no cost.

To take advantage of this free open access option:  Look for an email after acceptance of your article, with a link into the ACS ecommerce system and an order for making that article open access; enter the ACS Author Rewards promotional codes you have received in the “Discount” section. Or, if you cannot find that link, access your ACS ChemWorx account and look for the ACS AuthorChoice app, where you can enter the article’s DOI.

• A new open access multidisciplinary journal, ACS Central Science, will launch in January 2015.

To take advantage of this free open access option:   Submit your manuscript to ACS Central Science any time starting with December 2014.  There are no author fees for open access publication in this new journal.

Also: ACS offers ACS Author Choice, a paid open access option, which is not free unless you use author rewards (see above), but which includes a 25% discount on open access fees for MIT authors because of MIT Libraries’ subscriptions.

Electrochemical Society/ECS:  As of early this year, all four of the ECS journals have an open access option. This option is currently free for MIT authors. 

To take advantage of this free open access option: When submitting an article, the manuscript submission system will ask two questions:

• Do you want to publish as Open Access —the author should say ‘yes’
• Do you have article credits to apply for the open access option – the author should indicate that they have credits because their institution, MIT, subscribes.

These steps will ensure your article is published open access.

Royal Society of Chemistry/RSC: RSC is offering a new open access repository – the Chemical Sciences Article Repository, and two free open access journal options:

• The “gold for gold” vouchers program where authors whose campus libraries have purchased the full RSC journals package — as at MIT — can publish open access free of charge.

 To take advantage of this free open access option:  request a voucher from the MIT Libraries.  A limited number of vouchers can be applied retrospectively to 2013 and 2014 articles, as well as to current articles.

•  The RSC’s flagship journal, Chemical Science, will switch to open access as of 2015. There will be no author fees for at least two years.

 To take advantage of this free open access option:   Submit your manuscript to Chemical Science in 2015 or 2016.

 

Ellen Finnie Duranceau / Program Manager, Scholarly Publishing, Copyright & Licensing / MIT Libraries / x38483