The open access publishing component of the agreement applies to articles accepted for publication between July 15, 2022 and December 31, 2023. Reading access to IEEE publications runs from January 1, 2022 through December 31, 2025. The agreement includes all ten UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It does not currently include the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Following acceptance of a manuscript, UC corresponding authors will be notified of the open access publishing options under the agreement, presented with IEEE’s standard APC (article processing charge), and asked to indicate whether they have research funds available to pay the APC. Authors with research funds available for open access publication charges can pay the APC using such funds. Beginning July 15, 2022, authors who do not have research funds available may receive full funding of the APC from the UC libraries, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access with IEEE. For details, see below under “Article Payment Process.”

All UC corresponding authors are eligible to receive coverage of overlength page charges, regardless of how they choose to publish with IEEE.

UC has shifted its investment from paying to read IEEE journals to paying based on UC authors publishing in IEEE 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 how many authors pay the discounted APC using 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 rates will remain the same throughout the term of the agreement.

Yes, if you are (1) a UC affiliate (faculty, lecturer, staff, student, resident) at one of UC’s campuses or the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, (2) you are the article’s corresponding author, and (3) you choose to publish your article open access in an IEEE journal. Authors affiliated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are not currently included in the agreement, but may be in the future.

If you want to publish your article open access, UC has negotiated a deal that will cover the entire cost for you if you do not have funds available to pay the open access fee (also known as an article processing charge, or APC) yourself. If you want to publish in an IEEE hybrid journal but do not want to publish open access, you can still publish your article as paywalled (pay-to-read or subscription only) content. 

The agreement also provides reading access to the full portfolio of IEEE journals for all UC-affiliated faculty, lecturers, staff, students and clinicians.

Only corresponding authors are covered by the publishing aspects of this agreement. 

IEEE considers the corresponding author to be the person listed as the contact person during the submission/production/publication process, and who is identified as “Author for correspondence” on the final published article.

In general, the corresponding author is the person who oversees the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process – from manuscript corrections and proofreading, to handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts. The corresponding author has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors in all matters pertaining to publication of the manuscript including supplementary material. The corresponding author acts as the point of contact for any inquiries after the paper is published.

All articles in IEEE journals are covered by this agreement.

The publishing aspects of the agreement will apply to articles accepted from July 15, 2022, through December 31, 2023. 

Between July 15, 2022 and August 1, there will be a technical set up phase for the agreement, during which corresponding authors will be contacted by IEEE and provided the opportunity to publish open access under the agreement. Corresponding authors whose articles have already been accepted for publication will be given the option by IEEE to make their articles open access. Corresponding authors who already selected open access and were invoiced for an APC, but have not yet paid, will be eligible to publish open access under the agreement. Invoices that have already been paid by the author are considered closed by IEEE and are not eligible for refunds.

All IEEE journals are included in this agreement.

Following acceptance of a manuscript, UC corresponding authors will be notified in IEEE’s submission portal of the open access publishing options under the agreement, presented with IEEE’s standard APC (article processing charge), and asked to indicate whether they have research funds available to pay the APC.

If you are a UC corresponding author and your manuscript has been accepted by IEEE, you will be notified in IEEE’s submission portal of the open access publishing options under the agreement, presented with IEEE’s standard APC (article processing charge), and asked to indicate whether you have research funds available to pay the APC. If you select the OA publishing option (whether or not you have research funds to pay the APC), you will receive an invitation to log into the payment processing system used by IEEE, CCC RightsLink, to complete the process.

(It is necessary to set up an account in RightsLink first; if you do not have an account, you will be prompted to create one within RightsLink during the payment process.) 

Then click through the following steps in the RightsLink system, including:

• If you have the research funds to pay the APC, select “I have research funding to pay the APC.” 
  • You will then be asked to enter billing details, after which IEEE will send you an invoice for the APC.
• If you do NOT have research funds to pay the APC, select “I do not have the research funds to pay the APC. I would like to receive funding from the UC libraries.” 
  • You do not need to contact your campus’s library to ask for funding. You will receive confirmation within one business day and your charge will be paid in full by the libraries.
  • You will also be asked to identify the reason that full funding is needed, choosing from a menu of options (e.g., the research is not grant-funded and you have no other sources of funding available; the grant budget did not include money for publishing; etc.)
  • You will not be sent an invoice for the APC.

If you don’t have research funds and you want to publish open access, the UC libraries will pay your full article processing charge. See above under “if I choose to publish open access, how do payments work?”

Yes. While the UC Academic Senate strongly recommends choosing the open access option, where and how you publish is your decision. The agreement with IEEE covers the entire cost of the open access publishing option if you want to publish open access but don’t have research funds available for that purpose, but it does not mandate open access publishing, nor does it dictate your journal selection. As with UC’s other open access agreements, you can opt out.

The coverage of overlength page charges will be applied automatically when you indicate your UC affiliation in IEEE’s submission portal. All UC corresponding authors are eligible to receive coverage of overlength page charges, whether or not they publish open access.

More information is available via:

• Press release
• Memorandum of Understanding

Or from your campus library:

• UC Berkeley 
• UC Davis
• UC Irvine 
• UCLA 
• UC Merced 
• UC Riverside 
• UC San Diego 
• UC San Francisco
• UC Santa Barbara 
• UC Santa Cruz