CSUSB author-researchers can benefit from Open Access publishing agreements with several scholarly publishers. You may hear these called "Read and Publish" agreements, or "Transformative Agreements."
Most journal content from these publishers is behind paywalls, although authors may pay a fee to subsidize making their article Open Access (so-called "Gold" Open Access). Under the current agreements, CSUSB authors can make their articles Open Access without having to pay the author fee. This fee is often called an APC (Author Publication Charge or Article Processing Charge).
If you have questions about any of CSUSB's Read & Publish agreements, or if your article does not qualify under one of the agreements above, you can publish via green open access in Scholarworks, the CSUSB Institutional repository.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
ACM's agreement is with the CSU. ACM's goal is to transition to fully OA publishing in December 2025.
Conditions:
- The corresponding author of the article must be CSUSB (or other CSU) affiliated.
- The article must be original research or a research review. (In other words: things like book reviews and editorials aren’t covered.)
For details, please consult ACM OPEN's information page.
ACS (American Chemical Society)
ACS's agreement is with the CSUs, UCs, and SCELC members. Read ACS's news release.
Conditions:
- The corresponding author of the article must be CSUSB (or other CSU) affiliated.
- The acceptance date for the article must fall between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2025.
- The ACS model is "Multi-Payer." That is, if you have grant funds available to subsidize the open access fee, you can choose to pay from your grant. If you don't have grant funds, you can ask for the open access subsidy available under the CSU agreement.
For details about how the request process works, please see this UC-created guide about the payment process.
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge's agreement is with subscribing campuses from the SCELC library consortium.
Conditions:
Elsevier
Elsevier's agreement is with the entire CSU system. Read the announcement from the CSU libraries.
Conditions:
- The corresponding author of the article must be CSUSB (or other CSU) affiliated.
- The acceptance date for the article must fall between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2024. UPDATE: The CSU Council of LIbrary Directors has voted to extend the agreement for 3 more years (2025-2027)
- Details at Elsevier’s site.
Oxford University Press
A joint CSU/UC/SCELC agreement with Oxford UP was announced on Feb. 11, 2025. More details will be added here as they become available. View the announcement: California Universities and Oxford University Press Sign Landmark Open Access Agreement.
Under the agreement, the CSU Libraries provide financial support to CSU corresponding authors for the payment of open access publishing fees, also known as article processing charges (APCs):
*CSU corresponding authors who publish open access in OUP hybrid (subscription) journals receive an automatic $1000 contribution towards the APC and the option to receive full coverage of the APC for authors who lack research funds to pay the remainder.
*CSU corresponding authors who publish in OUP’s fully open access journals receive an automatic $750 contribution towards the APC.
To be eligible to publish Open Access and use funding from participating UC, CSU and SCELC institutions you must be:
- the corresponding author of the article
- affiliated to one of the UC, CSU or SCELC-affiliated institutions
- You must indicate this as your primary affiliation when submitting the article in order to be recognized as eligible
- Publishing a research article, review article, case report, or brief report which is received into OUP production on or after 1 January 2025
- Publishing in an eligible hybrid or fully open access journal
- If you are publishing your article in a Supplement, then you are not eligible to use Read and Publish funds to cover the open access charge.
- Find out more by reading the Step-by-Step Author Guide or watching the Author's Video.
Wiley
Wiley's agreement is with subscribing campuses from the SCELC library consortium.
Conditions:
- The corresponding author of the article must be CSUSB-affiliated.
- The article must be original research or a research review. (In other words: things like book reviews and editorials aren’t covered.)
- The acceptance date for the article must fall between January 1, 2022, and December 31, 2023.
- UPDATE: The Wiley agreement has been extended for 2024-2026.
- The 2024-26 agreement model is "Multi-Payer." That is, if you have grant funds available to subsidize a discounted open access fee, you can choose to pay from your grant. If you don't have grant funds, you can ask for the open access subsidy available under the SCELC agreement.
- Details at SCELC's Wiley "Read and Publish" library guide.