1. Royal Society of Chemistry
Insight and Outlook – A Review of the Royal Society
of Chemistry’s Open Access Program
Estoril, Portugal
Mikhail Popov, Sales Executive – Eastern & Northern Europe

2. Royal Society of Chemistry ( RSC )
Washington D.C. & Philadelphia
Bangalore
Beijing &
Shanghai
Tokyo
London &
Cambridge
São Paulo
Founded in 1841
One of the largest organisations
for advancing the chemical sciences
Not-for-profit Organisation with a worldwide network of over 54,000 members
Internationally acclaimed publishing business
Berlin
Offices around the world
We celebrate our 175th anniversary this year

3. Our Journals We publish over 40 journals
They are classical subscription Journals, where journal articles are made Open Access on payment of an APC.
We publish about articles per year.
Point to the growth of articles
Maybe name a few Impact Factors: Energy and Environmental Science : Green Chemistry: CHemSocRev: Natural Products Report: 10.98
Next to the journals there is a lot other content :
Over 1,200 books and eBooks
5 literature updating services, 2 magazines
and 2 Databases
And we cover : Chemical Sciences
Energy & Environmental Sciences
Food Science
Medicinal Chemistry & Biomolecular Sciences
Nano, Polymers & Materials Science

4. Our Open Access Policies
Gold OA Options
Gold OA journal: Chemical Science (APC waiver until end 2017)
All other journals gold OA option - APC £1,600 (full paper)
Green OA Options
Allow authors to deposit accepted manuscript version in a non-commercial repository
Embargo period of 12 months applies
Automatic deposition in CSAR
Chemical Science is only OA Journal – RSC is covering the publishing costs so far and decided to continue to do so – free to read and free to write for authors
CS – is our flasgship journal, IF , in order to strengthen the acceptance of OA publishing we are covering the publication costs and continue to do so for another year

5. Vouchers can be used in all RSC Journals
RSC Gold Journal Package subscribing institutions are provided Voucher Codes for authors to publish Gold OA free of charge
1 Voucher Code per £1600 subscription price ( example £ 16,000 subscription price/ £1600= 10 Voucher Codes )
Vouchers can be used in all RSC Journals
And we have something else : Gold for Gold - A unique program by the RSC to support the transition to OA
To explain again what it is
RSC Gold is a package with all Journals and Literature Alerting Services
We wanted to support the funder led evolution of gold Open Access
We recognised researchers are being asked to publish OA, but did not have the funding .
Was started it as a pilot in 2012 in the UK – a reply to the finch report
rolled out worldwide in 2013
All co and corresponding authors are allowed to use the vouchers in all our journals

6. Where is it happening? Mainly localised around the UK, Germany, USA
Colour
OA Articles
Number of Regions
209
1 - 10 12 9 7
Mainly localised around the UK, Germany, USA
Other areas include Europe (particularly The Netherlands, Sweden & Switzerland, significant growth in Poland), Japan, Singapore and Australia.
Lack of presence in Middle East

7. Distribution of Gold OA articles published in RSC journals
Total percentage showing number of open access articles published per country.
Other = Countries that have published 1% or less articles that have been made open access.
So far for % of our open access publications are from China

8. Top ten countries publishing Gold OA articles RSC journals in 2015
Country
Number of OA Articles
% of OA articles
United Kingdom
458 32
Germany
372 29
United States
296 9
China
173 2
Japan
143 12
Spain 74 10
Australia 73 13
Italy 66
France 63 7
Switzerland 59 24
This is the top ten countries publishing Open Access in 2015 at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
This is the top ten countries publishing Open Access in 2015 at the Royal Society of Chemistry. The percentage is the percentage of total articles published per county that are OA
China are publishing 6% of our total OA articles and are 4th highest in the number of OA publications – this is still only 2% of their overall publications with us.

9. Open Access Articles in Relation
In these 4 years 7,982 articles have been published Open Access
Very little percentage
For 0,7% of all RSC Articles an APC was paid

10. Results & Usage In 2015 10,000 Vouchers issued In over 40 countries
Over 700 customers qualified for this project
Lets have a look of the numbers
Low acceptance of the program even if it is a free add-on and sponsored by RSC, a lot of administration requited from our site ( 6 people processing applications, customer service and sales team answering 1000 questions )
Supported institutions with article lists, promotional material, spoke about the program on many events

11. Top 10 Countries Number of used G4G Vouchers
Talk a bit about the countries
Germany we have a 3 year Alliance license for RSC Gold with 98 members / customers are allowed to pool the vouchers at the end of the year/
United Kingdom- JISC consortium - cleary a strong OA supporting country
United States? ?

12. Top 10 Institutions G4G Voucher User
The 3 germans on the top - they took advantage of the rule that Vouchers get pooled in GER and used vouchers other consortia members hadnt used

13. Accepted articles of the Russian authors

14. OA articles of the Russian authors

15. Usage of G4G vouchers in Russia

16. Gold for Gold – is it a success?
introduce the Open Access road to researchers without extra costs
sparked discussion about Open Access in chemistry
Instrument for librarians to experiment with OA
When you see the numbers , you would say No. And there is a big problem that the programm is misinterpreted as an Off-Setting Model or Business Modell – which is not the case: it was a quick reply and a very pragmatic approach , also wrong that institutions paid anything for it.
BUT we see it as a success
initiative was a great opportunity to introduce the Open Access road to researchers in chemistry, it sparked discussion about Open Access in the chemistry community and helped librarians to experiment with Open Access without extra costs. Librarians feedback the closer relationship with faculties
It helped us to analyse the needs and interests and kept us as valuable partner for discussions around OA

17. Outlook Gold for Gold will end in 2017
Concentrate more on the development of Open Access Products
Cover costs for Chemical Science for another year
Flip another successful RSC Journal and discount the APC’s
Develop sustainable OA transformation models
( output based)
Ensuring a sustainable future for open access publishing in the chemical sciences remains a strategic priority for the Royal Society of Chemistry,
focus on developing more open access journals in which to publish high quality research.
next year RSC Advances becomes gold open access- official announcement comes in the next days , we decided to introduce very disruptive APC’s and will discount them for a 2 year period
Transition models : big challenge for RSC and customers to switch a subscription model into an out-put based model
As a few critical Questions : who is redistributing the costs within countries ( institutions with high and low publishing output will pay more and less ) ?
Currently only well doing european countries ask for these offers – what with all other countries? Do these countries want to pay for the others?
If you pay for what you publish- how do you want to access the rest that is behind a paywall?

18. Article processing charges:
RSC Advances, currently the largest chemistry journal in the world, will be gold open access from January 2017
Article processing charges:
Full price
£750 (+VAT if applicable)
Discounted price for
£500 (+VAT if applicable)
Corresponding authors from Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kyragyz Republic, LAO PDR, Moldova, Pakistan and Philippines
£250 (+VAT if applicable)
Corresponding authors from Research4Life Group A & Group B
Full APC waiver

19. Thank you ! Questions? Mikhail Popov
Sales Executive – Eastern & Northern Europe