The new agreement between IOP Publishing (IOPP) and the UC Libraries provides funding for authors to publish open access in IOPP’s journals for three years from the start of the 2025 calendar year.

Authors who choose open access will not incur article processing charges (APCs) in IOPP’s fully OA and hybrid journals as well as most partner journals, except journals owned by the American Astronomical Society. The corresponding author needs to be affiliated with UC Santa Cruz (or another University of California campus). Articles eligible for this agreement must contain original research.

To be certain about which journals are eligible, authors may use the IOPP Journal Finder to verify if the IOPP journal they wish to publish in meets their funder requirements or is covered by UC’s open access publishing agreement. Authors may also use UC’s Journal Open Access Lookup Tool (JOLT) to search the journal title and find out whether it is covered and the terms.

For authors of qualifying articles published between January 1, 2025, and the launch of the agreement in June 2025, you will be contacted by IOPP in the following scenarios: 

• If you published behind a paywall with IOPP this year, IOPP will ask if you would like to retroactively convert your article to open access. 
• If your article is already open, IOPP will reach out and refund any APCs already paid during that time frame.

Please see the frequently asked questions about our IOPP agreement for more information, including how authors may select open access under this new agreement.

If you have questions about publishing with IOPP or open access at UCSC, please reach out to the University Library at research@library.ucsc.edu.