Introduction: this agreement gives current staff and students at participating institutions read access to the full collection of ACS journals, including the full archive of back issues.
Agreement period: 1 January 2026 – 31 December 2026
Resources: ACS All Publications Package, ACS Legacy Archives Package
Participating members:
- Dublin City University
- Maynooth University
- Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
- Technological University Dublin
- Trinity College Dublin
- University College Cork
- University College Dublin
- University of Galway
- University of Limerick
Open Access:
- The agreement does not include provision to publish open access (ie making the publisher branded version available on ACS’s website) at no cost to the author.
- For hybrid journals, corresponding authors affiliated with participating institutions:
- may make their works open access by depositing a copy of the author accepted manuscript in a public repository with a CC-BY license and with no embargo period. No charge applies for this and there is no limit to the number of articles covered. ACS will ask authors to select a preference for this on acceptance and they may then upload to their chosen repository. For authors who are not eligible to benefit from this OA provision, ACS now impose “Article Development Charges” to authors who wish to make accepted manuscripts available in a public repository with a CC license and without an embargo period. We recommend that authors consult with their library in advance of submission if such charges are to be applied.
- may publish the version of record of their article (ie the publisher branded version available on ACS’s website) open access by paying a discounted article processing charge (APC). The discount applies to hybrid journals only: $2,000 for a CC-BY license, $1,500 for CC-BY-NC-ND.
- For fully open access journals, authors will need to pay the full APC charge
- Further information from ACS:
FAQ:
1. Will institutions still have read access to ACS journals?
Yes. Participating institutions will continue to have full read access to ACS journals.
2. Does this affect my ability to submit to ACS journals?
No. You can still submit to and publish in ACS journals. However, open access publishing fees will not be covered by IReL. Authors submitting to ACS’s fully open access journals should ensure that they have the means to pay the APC.
3. How can an author meet a funder’s OA mandate and not pay an Author Publishing Charge (APC) with ACS’s hybrid journals?
For ACS hybrid journals, authors can meet funders’ open access mandates by depositing the author accepted manuscript in an institutional repository without embargo and apply a CC-BY. There is no charge for this for corresponding authors at participating institutions. Corresponding authors who are not affiliated with a participating institution will be asked by ACS to pay an “article development charge”. We recommend that authors consult with their library in advance of submission if such charges are to be applied.
4. Can I still publish my articles as open access with ACS on the journal’s site?
Yes, authors can opt to publish open access in ACS journals but the author will have to pay the Article Processing Charge (APC). There is a reduced APC rate for publishing in hybrid journals under this agreement (see above). Authors submitting to ACS’s fully open access journals, such as the Au titles, will be required to pay the full APC.
4. What other alternatives do IReL member affiliated authors have for publishing open access?
IReL still has over twenty open access publishing agreements which allow eligible authors to publish OA in thousands of journals, including many of the leading chemistry journals from publishers such as Springer Nature and Elsevier.
Further information