American Chemical Society Implements Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink® for Open Access Solution

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a global licensing and content solutions organization, announced today the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society, has selected CCC’s RightsLink® for Open Access to manage Article Processing Charges (APCs) for its Open Access publications.

ACS will use RightsLink for Open Access to streamline payments from authors by providing easy-to-use tools for paying Open Access charges. The RightsLink solution provides authors with invoices and utilities that ease the process of institutional reimbursement and increases efficiencies for customer service, finance and operations.

“We were looking for an automated solution to capture author payments efficiently,” said Brandon Nordin, Vice President, Sales, Marketing and Web Strategy, ACS. “ACS has a large base of authors and service offerings for them. It was important for us to select a partner that was flexible, could support our Open Access pricing models, including ACS Author Rewards, and grow with us.”

ACS currently offers an Open Access option for all its journals, which are hybrid-OA titles, but plans to offer a fully Open Access journal in 2014.

CCC’s RightsLink for Open Access securely manages APCs, as well as page and color charges. Additionally, RightsLink offers 24/7 OA-aware permissions services at the article level; complies with funding agencies’ mandates; provides author support, billing, and rapid collection services.

Since RightsLink for Open Access can be integrated with any journal production system and manuscript submission workflow, it helps publishers save time and money and allows their authors to place orders with confidence and ease.

CCC has been helping publishers improve the author experience in collecting APCs for more than six years and welcomes efforts toward standardization and transparency. It recently joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, working with its members on issues such as collecting APCs and Open Access-aware licensing. CCC was named one of “10 to Watch” by information industry analyst Outsell in its 2013 Open Access Market Report, recently endorsed the Research Information Network’s call for cooperation among funders, universities and publishers.

CCC, in collaboration with the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), recently launched an Open Access Resource Center that links to the latest Open Access news, reports, industry whitepapers, webinars and websites. CCC hosts webinars and podcasts on many aspects of Open Access and works with organizations such as the National Information Standards Organization on creating standards related to Open Access.