Graph of deposits to eScholarship, from 50,000 in January 2012 to over 400,000 in October 2023. Marks on the slope indicate various milestones including UC Publication Management System launch in January 2015, LBL notifications launch in 2017, and EuroPMC autodeposit launch in 2020.
Deposits to eScholarship have increased since implementation of the open access policies. (Click to view full size chart.)

The University of California’s open access policies have had a galvanizing effect on the UC academic community over time, encouraging faculty, students, and staff to increasingly challenge the scholarly publishing status quo and insist on their rights and opportunities to ensure that their research is widely and openly available. 

In support of these policies, the California Digital Library and its UC campus partners provide the following tools and services to UC authors:

  • A robust publication management system to automate discovery of UC-affiliated publications, alert authors via email, and simplify deposit into eScholarship, UC’s open access repository and publishing platform
  • A tool to support the generation of embargo, waiver, and addendum forms, if necessary, at the author’s request.
World map showing views and downloads of OA policy deposits from 2013-2023. Articles have been accessed from every country in the world; North America, Europe, South Asia, and East Asia show the highest density of use.
As of October 2023, readers worldwide have accessed OA-policy affiliated publications in eScholarship more than 30 million times. (Click to view full size.)

Articles deposited in eScholarship in accordance with UC’s open access policies have benefited significantly from global visibility and readership. Learn more about the terms of the UC OA Policies and deposit your work in eScholarship today! 

Implementation timeline

The evolving implementation of these policies has spanned a decade. The timeline for this work is summarized below:

July 24, 2013: UC Academic Senate adopts Senate Open Access Policy. 

November 2013: Office of Scholarly Communication site released.

November 2013-2014: Manual deposit into eScholarship implemented across all campuses.

October 2014: UCOLASC (University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication) 6-month OA Policy implementation review.

September 2015: UCOLASC review of publication management system.

October 25, 2015: Presidential Open Access Policy passed. Manual deposit implemented for all non-senate UC employees in accordance with this policy.

January 2015 – January 2016: Publication management system launched for Senate faculty at all 10 UC campuses.

November 2016 – January 2017: Publication management system launched for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory staff.

October – December 2019: Publication management system pilot launch for non-senate faculty and staff at UC Irvine and UC Riverside.

May 2022 – September 2023: Publication management system launched for non-senate faculty and staff at all 10 UC campuses.

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