Open Access Publishing

UCSF and the University of California system have transformative open access publishing agreements and publishing discounts with a broad range of scholarly publishers, including large commercial journal publishers as well as society, not-for-profit, and fully open access publishers.

• UC/UCSF agreements with ACS, Biochemical Society, Cambridge, Cold Springer Harbor Lab, Elsevier, JMIR, PLOS, Springer Nature, and more.

The UC Libraries and Faculty Senate offer a toolkit for negotiating open access publishing agreements and provide extensive documentation on UC’s publisher deals with Elsevier and other publishers.

Resources from the UC Office of Scholarly Communication to support journal editors, publishers and organizations in facilitating a transition to open access (OA).

• Transitioning Journals to OA

All theses and dissertations (ETDs) published by UCSF Graduate Division students since 2007 are now freely available on eScholarship, UC’s open publishing platform. Most theses & dissertations from before this date have been digitized and are being released on eScholarship. In 2020, UC passed a policy for open access to all UC theses and dissertations.

• UCSF’s Open Access ETDs
• UC’s Open Access ETD policy

UC Academic Senate faculty devised 18 bold principles to transform scholarly communication into a more open, transparent, and fair system and to give faculty more control over their research outputs.

• Declaration of Rights & Principles to Transform Scholarly Communication (PDF)

UCSF signed the Open Access 2020 Expression of Interest, indicating its intention to pursue a transformation of subscription journals to OA.

• UCSF Commits to Make All Journals Freely Accessible