Open Access FAQ

There are several types of discounts or funding support from the Library in place with numerous publishers. All of the following types of agreements and discounts are listed by publisher name at Discounts and Funding for Open Access Publishing. The discount or payment applies to authors in the corresponding author position unless otherwise noted.

1. Transformative open access agreements (UC-wide) with publishers provide funding support to UC corresponding authors to publish their scholarly articles open access. Many (but not all) of these agreements use the following model:
   • The UC Libraries automatically pay at least the first $1000 of the article processing charge (APC). UC has also negotiated a discounted APC rate for many journals. Funding is handled through the publisher's manuscript system.
     • Other author discounts, such as a discounted member rate, may disrupt UC's payment and workflow. If this occurs, the author might be better off not taking the member rate if they plan to request full funding from UC.
   •  If there’s a remaining APC balance after the UC payment, the publisher payment system will ask UC authors if they have grant funding available to cover the balance. This cost-sharing model is designed to enable the UC libraries to stretch their available funds and help as many authors as possible.
   • If an author does not have grant funds to cover that difference, the UC libraries will pay the entire article processing charge on their behalf, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access. 
   • Check the Journal Open Access Lookup Tool (JOLT) for journals that are part of a UC agreement. Verify that UCSF is included in the agreement and what level of coverage is provided. 
2. Transformative open access agreements (UCSF-only): UCSF has agreements with the American Physiological Society and the Microbiology Society that cover the open access article publication cost for UCSF corresponding authors. 
3. Discounts for open access publishing charges ranging from 10% -50% are available with several additional publishers through either UC-wide or UCSF-only agreements. 

New publisher agreements will be announced in Library News and will be added to the Discounts & Funding page.

UCSF’s Open Access Publishing Fund was discontinued in 2022. This program previously provided funding for open access publications not covered by a publisher open access agreement.

The Journal Open Access Lookup Tool (JOLT) allows you to search by journal title or title keywords for journals covered by a UC-wide agreement. JOLT will also show you whether UCSF participates in the agreement. Note that journals with UCSF-only publisher agreements are not included in JOLT.

Discounts and Funding for Open Access Publication lists all publishers UCSF has an agreement with. A handful of agreements exclude some titles, and coverage varies for some journals and publishers, so be sure to check your journal and its coverage level. 

The funding or discount benefit applies to the corresponding author position and is valid for any role, including student, staff, and faculty. See additional author eligibility information in the General FAQ for the UC publisher agreements. 

Directly through the publisher’s manuscript submission and payment system. There is no need to request funds from the UCSF Library. A central UC Libraries account managed by the California Digital Library (part of UCOP) reviews all funding requests to verify the UC affiliation of the corresponding author. You'll find details in the Article Payment Process section in the full details for each publisher's agreement. 

There are no caps on the number of articles an author can publish under an agreement nor the amount of funding an author can receive. As long you are the corresponding author and the work was conducted as part of your affiliation with UC, you are eligible. 

See additional FAQs about the funding approval mechanism.

UC authors have the academic freedom to publish where and how they wish. When publishing an article in a journal covered by a UC agreement, the default access model will be open access. Authors can opt out of the OA model in journals where it is optional (hybrid OA journals). However, the UC Academic Senate encourages authors to choose the open access option in these journals, even if they need to request full funding by UC. Opting out means publishing under the subscription model, which restricts readership to subscribers or pay-per-article access. 

UC investigators are encouraged to include funds for open access publishing in their grant budgets where possible. 

Authors can also make the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) version of articles published under a subscription model freely available per UC’s open access policies. See 'Do authors have other options for making their work open access?' below. 

There is a wide range of open access journals with different fee levels for you to consider, and there are also OA journals that do not charge any fees. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a trusted community-funded resource for fully OA journals.

Authors have two ways to make a fee-free version of their scholarly publications free and open for all to access. These methods are often referred to as self-archiving or green open access. Read more about gold and green OA.

1. Deposit your manuscript as a preprint in an open access preprint repository. A preprint is a manuscript of scholarly research that has not undergone peer review. Preprints are free to publish, and can be cited and updated. Most journals allow preprint deposit of manuscripts submitted for publication, but it's a good idea to check the preprinting policies for journals you are planning to submit your work to. See our recommended preprint servers. 
2. All UC employees (including faculty, staff, and graduate student researchers) can deposit their final author accepted manuscripts (AAM) in eScholarship per UC’s open access policies. Read more about which version of the publication to deposit. Any UC author on the publication can exercise this right (read more), and only one author needs to deposit the article in eScholarship. No payment is necessary to publish this version of your publications.

Students who are not paid employees may be able to follow this practice in accordance to the publisher's self-archiving rights. Refer to the publication agreement you signed for "self-archiving" or "green open access" rights for your article. If the agreement is not available, look up the journal's policy in the Open policy finder database. 

In addition, there are many quality open access journals that charge no or low fees for publishing OA. These journals are subsidized by library or institutional memberships, societies, or funders. Use the community-funded Directory of Open Access Journals to search for trusted OA journals. 

Our agreements with publishers repurpose library funds spent on journal subscriptions to support open access publishing. The multipayer model and our publisher agreements do not reduce the libraries’ financial responsibility. The libraries will continue to ensure that UC scholars have access to subscription journal content.

UC is shifting its investment from paying to read journals in transformative agreements to paying based on UC authors publishing in the publisher's journals. Based on careful modeling of UC publication rates, baseline fees have been established, with these amounts paid in bulk by UC. The exact amounts paid will be determined by UC corresponding author choices to publish open access and the amount authors contribute from their research funds.  

Cost controls have been put in place so that the total owed by UC in any year of the agreement is bounded, and APC (article processing charge) rates will remain the same throughout the term of the agreement.

See our recommendations for evaluating unfamiliar journals and conferences to assess a journal's trustworthiness, and see steps to finding the right journal for publication.

Check journals that are fully open access in the Directory of Open Access Journals. Journals that have records in DOAJ can be trusted to not be deceptive or predatory.