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Memorandum of understanding signed for four-year agreement that will empower more UC authors to share their scholarship openly with the world

The University of California (UC) and Taylor & Francis today announced a memorandum of understanding for a four-year read and publish agreement that will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access (OA) articles in nearly 2,500 Taylor & Francis journals. The new partnership between UC and one of the ten largest publishers of UC research advances a mutual goal to empower more authors to share their scholarship openly with readers around the globe.

Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the OA fees in full for any UC corresponding author who chooses to publish OA in Taylor & Francis and Routledge journals. Authors of articles accepted for publication in a hybrid or full OA title will have the opportunity to choose OA at no cost to them.

Taylor & Francis has one of the world’s largest Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) portfolios, with more journals in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index® than any other publisher. The new agreement advances a broader goal within UC to expand support for authors publishing HSS research, areas that generally have had limited funding for OA publishing.

To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2024, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the OA fees fully covered. Authors who have already published OA since January 1 will be offered refunds for OA fees already paid.

In addition to extensive OA publishing support, the agreement also ensures the UC community has continued reading access to nearly 1,300 Taylor & Francis journals.

“With Taylor & Francis’ extensive Humanities and Social Sciences suite of journals, this new agreement offers an exciting opportunity for UC researchers to share their work more openly and widely than ever before,” said Mark Hanna, Associate Professor of History at UC San Diego and chair of the UC faculty Academic Senate’s systemwide committee on library and scholarly communication. “It underscores UC’s commitment to advancing academic research, removing barriers to access, and amplifying the impact of the important work being done across disciplines.”

“The University of California has been a pioneer in advancing OA in the United States, and we have a shared belief in the benefits of opening up the latest research,” said Jeff Voci, Senior Vice President & Commercial Lead – Americas at Taylor & Francis. “I am therefore delighted that many months of work with the UC Libraries team has resulted in a creative solution which fulfills their ambitious objectives. Since 2016, our UC agreements have included help for researchers to choose OA and the new partnership will significantly extend that support, boosting the reach and impact of trusted knowledge.”

Taylor & Francis is a leading publisher of open access journals, books, and research platforms. UC joins over 950 global institutions partnering with Taylor & Francis through open access agreements, including 14 others in the Americas.

For more details about the agreement, please visit the UC Office of Scholarly Communication website.

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About the University of California Libraries

Individually and collectively, the University of California Libraries provide access to the world’s knowledge for the UC campuses and the communities they serve, directly supporting UC’s missions of teaching, research, and public service. Open Access publishing supports the mission of the University of California by transmitting knowledge more broadly and facilitating new discoveries that build on the university’s research and scholarly work. UC generates nearly 10 percent of all research output in the United States; half of which is eligible for open access publishing under one of the university’s 17 transformative agreements. Learn more about Open Access at UC.

About Taylor & Francis

Taylor & Francis supports diverse communities of experts, researchers, and knowledge makers around the world to accelerate and maximize the impact of their work. We are a leader in our field, publish across all disciplines and have one of the largest Humanities and Social Sciences portfolios. Our expertise, built on an academic publishing heritage of over 200 years, advances trusted knowledge that fosters human progress.

Our 2,500+ people, based in a global network of offices in more than 15 countries, use their skills and the latest technology to curate, validate and share impactful advanced, emergent, and applied knowledge. Under the Taylor & Francis, Routledge and F1000 imprints, we publish 2,700 journals, 8,000 new books each year and partner with more than 700 scholarly societies.

Taylor & Francis is proud to be a Global Certified Accessible™ publisher and to have achieved CarbonNeutral® certification for our operations and print publications in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol.

Contacts

For the UC Libraries: Nikki Kolupailo, UC San Diego Library, nkolupailo@ucsd.edu

For Taylor & Francis: Mark Robinson mark.robinson@tandf.co.uk