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.

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 cannot access the system, contact the Library for help. See also how to deposit directly to eScholarship. 

2. Claim the publications in the Pending list that are yours. See Getting started: claim and deposit your publications.

3. Deposit the final accepted manuscript 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. 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 Sherpa Romeo database.
4. If your article is already openly available (i.e. does not require a subscription or payment for access), provide the URL for the full text on the deposit page by selecting the "Add an OA location" tab. This goes for NIH-funded articles on PubMed Central (PMC) or articles published open access on the publisher's platform (usually for a fee, and published under a CC BY license). 
   • Use the digital object identifier (DOI) link when entering an open access (OA) location on a publisher's website, e.g. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288109. The DOI should always resolve to the correct URL on the host site.
   • Use the PMC link when entering an OA location for free full text on PMC, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/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.

The UCOP Research Grants Program Office (RGPO) also has an Open Access Policy mirroring the other 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.