IOP Publishing and University of California sign open access agreement 

01 Jul 2025 by Kate Giles IOP Publishing and University of California sign open access agreement 

IOP Publishing (IOPP) and the University of California (UC) today announced a new transformative open access agreement that will accelerate publishing and expand access to high-quality research in physics and related disciplines. The three-year agreement will make it easier and more affordable for UC researchers to publish open access articles in all of IOPP’s owned journals and most of its partner journals, a total of 77 titles, and will advance the university’s efforts to empower more of its authors to share their research freely with the world.  

“As a global leader in open access, this new agreement enables UC to continue advancing equitable access to scientific knowledge,” 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. “This agreement not only supports researchers in physics and related areas but also reinforces UC’s commitment to maximizing the visibility and impact of the world-class research conducted across our campuses.” 

Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will automatically cover the full cost of publishing open access for corresponding authors at all 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who choose to publish in IOPP’s full open access and hybrid journals, as well as most partner journals. To maximize the number of UC researchers who can benefit from the newly signed agreement, authors of qualifying articles published since January 1, 2025, will be given the opportunity to retrospectively convert their article to open access, with the open access fees fully covered. Authors who have already published open access since January 1 will be offered refunds for open access fees already paid. 

Authors can use the IOPP Journal Finder to easily verify if the IOPP journal they wish to publish in meets their funder requirements or is covered by a transformative agreement. UC authors can also use UC’s Journal Open Access Lookup Tool (JOLT) to search for journals covered by any of UC’s systemwide open access agreements (including IOPP’s). 

Julian Wilson, Chief Sales Officer at IOP Publishing, commented: “In a time of great uncertainty around funding for US researchers, we stand firm in our support of independent, open science. As well as removing the administrative burden of dealing with invoices for article publication charges and supporting researchers, this agreement also offers authors greater visibility and impact for their research. Our open access articles typically receive 70% higher downloads and 15% higher citations when compared with non-open access articles in the same journal, underscoring the value of this initiative.”  

This new agreement adds to UC’s and IOPP’s rapidly growing portfolios of transformative open access agreements. The university has active open access partnerships with 22 of the largest publishers of UC research. IOPP’s partnerships now include over 1,000 institutions across 40 countries, reinforcing IOPP’s commitment to advancing open science and global access to academic research.