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Open Access Publishing Agreements: Springer

Discover the current open access publishing agreements in place, allowing options for publishing research open access at no cost to the author.

Agreement details

This agreement gives current staff and students at participating institutions the ability to make their articles open access without the author paying an article processing charge (APC). This applies to articles accepted for publication in eligible Springer Nature journals. Further details below.

Agreement period: 1 April 2021 – 31 Dec 2024.

UPDATE (1st July, 2024): the limited APC quota is expected to be used up in mid-August.

When the fund is fully spent each year, the author OA workflow will be suspended so authors will not be informed of the agreement on acceptance. 

What journals are included?

More than 2,000 Springer hybrid journals.
Check the list of hybrid journals that are included in the agreement here.
The list of all journals (including Springer) in IReL open access agreements.

Instructions for authors

Eligible authors: the corresponding author must be a current staff member or student of a participating institution at the time the article is accepted for publication. Requests for OA are subject to approval by participating institutions.

Eligible article types: Original Paper, Review Paper, Brief Communication, Continuing Education.

OA publishing license: CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-NC 4.0. Eligible Authors will retain copyright in the Eligible Article, subject to certain exceptions (including, but not limited to, articles published in Non-Standard Journals, or if requested by the author, and/or otherwise required by law or third parties (such as funding bodies).

Further information

Agreement page on springer.com.
Springer Author guide.