The University of California, via the California Digital Library, maintains a subscription to the Royal Society of Chemistry’s RSC Gold package.  As a result, RSC grants a discount to UC authors who wish to pay an article processing charge (APC) to publish their articles open access in any of RSC’s traditionally subscription journals.

Who is covered?

Corresponding authors who are affiliated with any UC campus, UC Office of the President, or Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

What journals are covered?

All RSC subscription journals.  This does not include RSC’s full open access journals, RSC Advances and Chemical Science (currently all APCs are waived for Chemical Science).

What is the discount?

15% off of the standard APC rate.  APCs vary by article type, and can be found in the Payment section of RSC’s Gold Open Access page.

This discount does not compound with other discounts offered by RSC (for individual membership or partner society membership); the maximum available discount is 15%.

How can I apply this discount?

Following acceptance, the UC-affiliated corresponding author may request OA publication of their article in an otherwise subscription journal. The 15% discount will be applied automatically based on the information entered in the Institution field on that form.

An invoice reflecting the discounted APC will be sent to the corresponding author.  If the discount is not correctly applied, the author may contact RSC’s Customer Services team at RSC1@rsc.org for further inquiry.

What licenses are available?

Creative Commons licenses CC BY or CC BY-NC.

For more information about the importance of license selection and Creative Commons in open access publishing, see this NEJM Perspective.

What is the business model behind this arrangement?

The Royal Society of Chemistry offers this discount to all institutional subscribers to the RSC Gold package independently of license negotiations; it is not explicitly included in subscription agreements.  The University of California does not pay for this discount, nor does UC receive any refund on subscription costs when UC-affiliated authors pay to publish in RSC journals.

More information about various options for making articles Open Access when publishing with RSC can be found on RSC’s Open Access page.

Last updated October 11, 2024.