On September 21st, the American Chemical Society (ACS) announced a new “Zero- Embargo Green Open Access” option that “allows” authors to purchase back their rights to a submitted manuscript, for a fee of $2,500, to post it immediately to a repository. Calling it an article development charge, ACS is trying to create a new revenue stream from research to which they’ve contributed no services under the false pretense of funder mandates. This new source of revenue would be complemented by publication charges in the forms of subscriptions, author processing charges or read and publish agreements with institutions.
Funders do not require researchers to pay a fee to make their works immediately and openly available. Coalition S, a group of European funding organizations, made it clear in this Plan S blog post that ACS’ new charge is a violation of author rights and contrary to the principles of open science. The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) has also issued a statement emphasizing the fundamental freedom and equity of researchers’ rights to deposit their works in repositories at no cost.
“COAR strongly encourages others in the scholarly community to raise their objections to this fee, and in particular, urges ACS authors and all researchers to refuse to sign over the rights to their Article Accepted Manuscripts, or pay any charges to share a work that they already own.
COAR’s response to the American Chemical Society’s new fee for repository deposit
Our challenge is to recognize the value of open science that is evaluated not on the basis of who publishes it but on the merits and reproducibility of the work. Only then will publishers like the American Chemical Society be forced to justify their contributions to their disciplines and society.
