UC Open Access Policies

• The UCSF Academic Senate passed the first open access policy in the University of California for its faculty by unanimous vote at the Senate’s May 21, 2012 meeting (press release). A year later the systemwide UC Faculty Senate passed a nearly identical policy for all UC Senate faculty.
• The UC Presidential Open Access Policy was passed on October 23, 2015, extending the same rights to non-Senate faculty and all other employees. The policy does not apply to students unless they are paid employees.

Steps to depositing your work:

1. Log in to the UC Publication Management System using your MyAccess credentials.

   Note: The UC Publication Management System was rolled out to all scholarly personnel in 2022-23. If you are an employee or Graduate Student Researcher and cannot access the system, contact the Library for help. 

   Students who are not paid employees may deposit to eScholarship directly.  See the section below for details.

2. Claim the publications in the Pending list that are yours. See Getting started: claim and deposit your publications.
3. Deposit the final author accepted manuscript (AAM) version of your scholarly articles that have been accepted for publication while employed at UCSF. See which version to deposit and what kinds of writings are covered. AAMs may be deposited immediately upon publication, as protected by UC's policies, even if the publisher has an AAM embargo. You may deposit your publications:
   • since May 21, 2012 if you are in the Professor, Professor in Residence, or Professor of Clinical X series (at any rank, including emeritus)
   • since October 23, 2015 if you are a Health Sciences Clinical Professor, Adjunct Professor, Resident, Fellow, Postdoc, Graduate Student Researcher, or in any other staff position
   • Older articles or those published while employed outside UC can be deposited according to your signed publication agreement. Or, refer to the journal's self-archiving policies found in the open policy finder database. See Collect and Share Your Older Publications for details.
4. If your article is already openly available (i.e. does not require a subscription or payment for access), you may choose to provide the URL for the free full text instead of depositing a file. This will create a record for your publication on eScholarship that links to the freely available article elsewhere. 
   • From the deposit page, select the "Add an OA location" tab.
   • Use the digital object identifier (DOI) link for articles published open access on the publisher's site, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288109. The DOI link resolves to the current URL on the publisher's site.
   • Use the PMC link when entering an OA location for free full text on PMC, e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10506663.
5. Your deposited articles will now be freely available in the UC open publishing platform, eScholarship where PubMed and search engines like Google Scholar can find them.

Additional information:

• See the Publication Management System Knowledge Base for additional support articles
• Faculty and staff who have support may appoint a delegate to complete these steps on their behalf.
• Monographs (books) are not covered by the policy.
• If you already manage your publications on platforms such as Google Scholar or ResearchGate, you may be able to import them into the Publication Management System.

UCSF students who are not in a paid position such as Graduate Student Researcher are not covered by either of the UC Open Access Policies. 

Students may still share their scholarly articles openly on UC's eScholarship platform by either:

• having a co-author who is a UC employee make the deposit following the section above; or
• depositing their final author accepted manuscript (AAM) following the terms in their author agreement, often after an embargo period. 

Steps to depositing your work:

1.  Log in to eScholarship. Create an eScholarship account using your UCSF email if you don't already have one.

2. Select Deposit Other Scholarly Publications to begin your deposit:

   Materials that are not (or not yet) published may only be deposited to an academic unit.

3. Deposit the final author accepted manuscript (AAM) version of your scholarly articles that have been accepted for publication. Generally, this is the version you're permitted to deposit per the journal or publisher. Policies vary, so refer to the terms in your agreement, or, look for your journal's policy in the  the Jisc open policy finder database.
   • See the eScholarship Repository User Guide under Submission Form for help filling out the form, or refer to the support video after logging in.
   • Under Descriptive Info, set an embargo for displaying the uploaded full text article if needed.
   • Select "I would like to specify how others may reuse this work" to assign a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to your work. The standard eScholarship deposit agreement will apply if nothing else is selected.
4. If your article is already openly available (i.e. does not require a subscription or payment for access), you may choose to provide the URL for the full text instead of depositing a file. This will create a record for your publication on eScholarship that links to the freely available article elsewhere. 
   • Use the digital object identifier (DOI) link for articles published open access on the publisher's site, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288109. The DOI link resolves to the current URL on the publisher's site.
   • Use the PMC link when entering an OA location for free full text on PMC, e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10506663.
5. Your deposited articles will now be freely available on eScholarship where PubMed and search engines like Google Scholar can find them.

The UCOP Research Grants Program Office (RGPO) also has an Open Access Policy mirroring the UC policies. UCSF researchers who receive RGPO awards can manage their publications and share their full text articles on eScholarship through the UC Publication Management System. See policy details and an instructional video, and contact RGPO-OA@ucop.edu with questions.

Similarly, researchers who receive Department of Energy (DOE) funding through the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) must comply with DOE's OA policy through the UC Publication Management system. See policy details, and contact publications@lbl.gov with questions.