From 1st January 2026, IReL’s new one-year agreement with the American Chemical Society (ACS) will provide read-only access to ACS content. Unfortunately, despite extensive negotiations with the publisher, an agreement on pricing and terms for open access publishing could not be reached.
IReL remains committed to supporting open access and will continue to work with publishers and Irish research community to advance sustainable publishing models. While this outcome is disappointing, our priority remains ensuring continued access to essential scholarly resources for our member institutions.
What happens next?
1. Will institutions still have access to ACS journals?
Yes. Participating institutions will continue to have full read access to ACS journals.
2. Can I still make my articles with ACS open access?
The 2026 agreement does not include provision for open access publishing. Authors wishing to publish open access in ACS journals will need to pay an APC (Article Processing Charge) directly to ACS. Authors can meet funders’ open access mandates by depositing the author accepted manuscript in an institutional repository without embargo and apply a CC-BY license. There is no charge for this for authors at participating institutions. Authors who are not affiliated with a participating institution will be asked by ACS to pay “article development charges” for this privilege. We recommend that authors consult with their library if such charges are applied.
3. Does this affect my ability to submit to ACS journals?
No. You can still submit and publish in ACS journals. However, open access options 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.
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.