Read and Publish: ACM OPEN
BCU Library has a Read & Publish deal with Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) until 31st December 2025.
If you have questions about what happens after this date, please see the Approaching the End of the Deal section, or the Next Gen OA Updates page.
This deal covers the fees for the following:
- Read access to the ACM Digital Library
- Publishing articles Gold Open Access in ACM conferences, journals and magazines
Criteria and Restrictions
Author eligibility
- You must be the corresponding author
- You must declare your affiliation with BCU
Article eligibility
Eligible article types include:
- Interview
- Note/editorial note/technical note
- Research article
- Review article
- Short paper
- Survey article
- Tutorial
The following article types are not covered:
- Abstract
- Announcement
- Article commentary
- Book review
- Column
- Correction
- Course material
- Demonstration
- Extended abstract
- Forum
- Introduction
- Invited talk
- Keynote
- Letter
- Newsletter
- Opinion
- Panel
- Poster
- Work in progress
Journal eligibility
Eligible journals are:
- All journals, conferences and magazines published exclusively by the ACM
The following journals are not covered:
- Collective Intelligence, a fully-OA journal published in collaboration with Sage
- 38 conference proceedings published in collaboration with IEEE
Eligible ACM journals and exceptions (webpage)
How to Access
- When you submit your article, you need to list BCU as your first affiliation.
- You will also need to use your BCU email address and supply your ORCID iD
- You will receive a confirmation email confirming your eligibility for this deal and including a link to the ACM eRights form
- Review the form and select your rights and permissions
- You will then receive a confirmation email
More Information
ACM has several resources to help you navigate this agreement:
- Author workflow document (pdf)
- ACM Open FAQ
- The Blue Diamond, ACM's newsletter for January 2025, with articles on their progress to Open Access and implications for authors.
Approaching the End of the Deal
This deal ends on 31st December 2025:
This deal ends on 31st December 2025:
- Jisc (representing the UK higher education sector) are currently negotiating with ACM for a deal covering 2026 onwards.
- As of August 2025, ACM have not made an offer that the sector can vote on.
- If they do put forward an offer before the end of the year, it will be a national decision. Any outcome will depend on how the whole sector votes, not just BCU.
What this means for you right now:
- Articles under this deal are automatically approved if they meet the eligibility requirements and don't go through a BCU Library dashboard.
- Funding may not be approved for articles with an acceptance date after 31st December 2025, and the Library will not be aware of them.
- ACM have committed to full Open Access from 2026, so the option to publish for free behind a paywall in a hybrid journal will also not be available.
Please be aware of this upcoming deadline and check review timeframes when using this deal in 2025. We will keep the Next Gen OA page updated with the latest developments.