What is OhioLINK?
OhioLINK, part of the Ohio Department of Higher Education, is Ohio’s academic library consortium. Easy, fast access to a vast amount of scholarly material has made Ohio’s higher ed library system the envy of academics across the country and OhioLINK one of the most respected library consortia. If you are looking for an article or book, chances are that you can get it through OhioLINK. OhioLINK cost-effectively acquires and maintains shared electronic library resources for its members--more than 37 million electronic journal articles, more than 241,000 electronic books, and more than 100 databases. It also funds and manages OhioLINK members’ inter-library loan program from a shared catalog of 38 million books and printed items. Your institution’s library would be happy to provide more information about what is available to you.
OhioLINK has negotiated several read and publish agreements for its institutions’ authors. These agreements provide expanded access to a broad range of high-quality research articles and allow authors to publish open access at no cost to the authors or additional cost to their institutions. Please see OhioLINK's open access publishing for authors page for additional information.
What is the American Chemical Society Read & Publish deal?
OhioLINK’s agreement with American Chemical Society (ACS) offers two major benefits for students, faculty, and staff at member institutions. It provides expanded access to important published research through all ACS journals. In addition, authors from OhioLINK member institutions can now publish open access journal articles in ACS's hybrid journals at no cost, with no yearly limits.
What is open access publishing? What does hybrid mean?
Open Access (OA) is a way to publish that makes content freely available to read with no subscription or access fees. It normally includes licensing the work to allow for reuse, such as Creative Commons licenses like CC-BY. "Hybrid" means that the journal allows an article to be published either under a subscription model or as open access. The author is not required to make their article open.
"Gold open access" can refer to individual articles that are published as open access when the author pays an article publication charge (APC). An APC allows the journal to make the article available to read without any subscription or fee. Gold open access articles may be published in either a fully open access journal, in which all articles are open access, or in a hybrid journal, where some articles are available only by subscription.
For more informaiton about open access, please see American Chemical Society's open access information for researchers.
Who is eligible to publish open access?
In order to be eligible to publish open access at no cost in an ACS journal under this deal, the corresponding author of the article (see below for definition) must be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center (EJC), a full text database of electronic journal articles from top scholarly publishers. There is no limit on the number of times an author can request open access funding under this agreement.
To find out if your institution participates, you can use ACS's Institution Lookup tool. You can find more information on ACS's webpage about the OhioLINK agreement, and your institution's library can help with questions.
What is a corresponding author? How is their affiliation identified?
The Corresponding Author is the person who agrees to manage the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process, including approving the article proofs. In addition, the Corresponding Author also acts as the point of contact for any inquiries after the paper is published. Corresponding authors identify their institutional affiliation at the time of submitting their article.
When can I publish open access articles in ACS journals?
To publish an article as open access in a hybrid journal without paying any Article Publication Charge (APC), the article to be published must be accepted for publication after January 1, 2026 and on or before December 31, 2028.
What kind of articles are eligible for open access publishing under this deal? Which journals are eligible?
Original research and review articles are eligible for open access publishing benefits. According to ACS, this includes almost all article types they publish, with some exceptions such as corrections, editorials, or articles published as “free” access.
For all OhioLINK libraries participating in the Electronic Journal Center (EJC), articles in any of ACS’s hybrid journals are eligible for publishing under this agreement (see PDF list of hybrid journals).
In addition, ACS offers a Sponsored Open Access Publishing program to allow APC-free open access publishing in their fully open access journals for selected Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs). This program allows corresopnding authors from these PUI institutions to also publish without APC charges in ACS's fully gold open access journals, in addition to the hybrid journals that are available through the OhioLINK agreement.
To find which journals are eligible for APC-free open access publishing for your institution, check ACS's web page about the OhioLINK agreement.
How does an author choose to publish an article as open access?
Under this ACS agreement, corresponding authors are eligible to publish their article as open access without payment of an APC based on affiliation with an eligible OhioLINK institution and submission to an eligible journal. Articles must be editorially accepted during the term of the agreement to be eligible.
On submission, authors confirm the institution affiliation listed in their ACS Publishing Center profile and that they are listed as the corresponding author for the article. The corresponding author will be prompted for their open access publishing options following editorial acceptance. If they choose to publish open access under the agreement, the request for APC coverage will be routed to librarians at their institution for review. Articles published as open access under this agreement will use a CC-BY 4.0 license.
You can find step-by-step information on ACS's open access website for authors. (Note that with OhioLINK's ACS agreement, the request process is complete at step 6.)
What information and training are available for faculty and authors?
ACS offers several resources for authors interested in publishing their articles open access:
- Coming soon, check back here for an invitation to a webinar for authors about the agreement.
- See participating institutions, current title list, and more on ACS's Read & Publish agreement with OhioLINK webpage.
- Search for your institution in ACS’s Institution Lookup tool to find more information about publishing under this agreement.
- ACS also has general information for researchers about publishing open access on their website.
Where can I go with questions?
Your campus library is the best resource. You can find additional information at:
- ACS’s web page about the OhioLINK agreement.
- OhioLINK's open access publishing for authors for information about additional open access publishing opportunities.
Updated January 5, 2026
