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Open Access

Learn about Open Access and how to make your scholarship freely available.

About the Agreement

The Lehigh University Libraries have entered into an Open Access (OA) publishing agreement with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) for 2025 via the Lyrasis consortium. This is a “read and publish” agreement that increases subscription access to RSC journals. Lehigh University-affiliated primary corresponding authors can also publish their eligible, accepted articles OA in RSC journals at no cost to the researcher. This agreement covers both Gold OA (all articles are OA) and hybrid (some articles are OA, some are subscription-access) journals.

Thanks to this agreement, readers anywhere in the world will be able to access Lehigh University researchers' publications immediately at RSC journal sites. Importantly, Lehigh University affiliated-authors must be sure to be listed as the primary corresponding author, select Lehigh University as their institution, and, most importantly, use their @lehigh.edu email address in the publication process to ensure their research article is Open Access. Please see further instructions for authors below.

Generally, all peer-reviewed articles are eligible under this agreement. Article eligibility will be based on acceptance date, which must occur during the term of the agreement.

Journal eligibility can be confirmed by selecting Lehigh University as the institution in RSC's Journal Finder tool, which is linked further below.

Instructions for Authors

At a high level, please be sure to take these initial steps to ensure eligibility of your article under this agreement:

  • Confirm that the article acceptance date is within the term of the agreement.
  • Confirm that the journal you plan to submit to is part of this agreement using the RSC Journal Finder, linked below.
  • Ensure you are listed as the primary corresponding author for the article submission.
  • Ensure that you list Lehigh University as your affiliated institution.
  • Importantly, ensure you are using your @lehigh.edu email address throughout the publication process.

Instructions regarding the publishing option selection and copyright form completion processes are linked below.

Please contact Phil Hewitt at pjh315@lehigh.edu and/or RSC at rsc1@rsc.org with any questions.