Starting your career? Here’s how Springer can help you publish open access
Author: Christabell Ndive & Jovial Toh
As an early career researcher (ECR), you’re likely to be seeking funding, building a reputation, establishing your profile, and trying to make your work stand out — all at once. Publishing open access (OA) can help you do exactly that. It puts your research in front of the people who need it — fellow researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and students around the world — immediately and forever, without a paywall standing in the way.
At Springer, we believe knowledge should travel as far as possible, and we’ve been helping researchers achieve that for more than 180 years. Today, OA is central to that mission.
This blog post is part of a series on OA funding options. Here, we focus on what’s available to you as an ECR publishing with Springer, whether you’re working on a journal article, an individual book chapter, or a whole book.
Why make your research publications open access?
OA research is freely available online from the moment it’s published. This means more readers, more citations, and more opportunities to make a real difference with your work — which really matters when you’re at the start of your career.
Publishing OA can help you:
Increase the visibility and discoverability of your research.
Reach a broader audience and attract more citations.
Share findings faster across disciplines and regions.
Comply with funder or institutional OA mandates.
Build your profile at a critical stage of your academic career.
We know that the cost of OA publishing can feel like a barrier, especially early on, when budgets are tight and institutional support may seem lacking. That’s why we offer a range of funding routes to help make it happen.
Publishing open access articles
Springer publishes both fully OA journals (where every article in the journal is freely available) and hybrid journals that allow you to make your article OA within a subscription journal — giving you flexibility to publish your research in the right journal. The evidence is striking: OA articles in Springer hybrid journals are accessed 4 times more often and cited 1.6 times more often on average.
Article processing charges: how to cover them
Unlike traditional subscription journals, where publishing is free to authors, OA publishing typically involves an article processing charge (APC) to cover the costs at every stage of the publication process, from administering peer reviews to copy-editing and hosting the final article on dedicated servers. But there are several ways these can be covered or reduced — and you may already have access to funding you don’t know about.
Open access agreements
Publishing your article through an OA agreement is the easiest route to OA for eligible authors. Many institutions provide financial support for researchers to cover APCs, often through OA agreements with publishers — either independently or through a consortium across multiple institutions. To find out what’s available at your institution, browse Springer Nature’s OA agreement pages, which shows details of the agreements in each region or country. Your university library is also a great resource — and you may find your APC is already fully covered.
Research grant funding
Your grant funding may cover OA publication costs. Many funders now actively encourage or even require OA publishing, so it’s worth checking your grant terms first.
Waivers and discounts
Springer offers APC waivers and discounts for authors based in eligible low- and middle-income countries and considers requests from authors facing financial hardship on a case-by-case basis. You can find the list of eligible countries in our APC waivers and discounts.
Publishing open access books
For many researchers, particularly in the humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary, a book is more than a publication. It’s a statement of expertise and an important milestone. Springer offers OA publishing for single-author books, contributed volumes, and edited books, all instantly freely available online upon publication.
OA books are widely downloaded — Springer’s OA portfolio has achieved over 200 million chapter downloads since 2013.
“We are moving faster as a society — we need things at the end of a click for immediate access. If it isn’t, then it won’t be used or cited as much.”
- Dr. Roseli Pellens, co-editor of Biodiversity Conservation and Phylogenetic Systematics (SpringerOpen, 2016)
Individual chapters can also be published OA via a chapter processing charge (CPC), making it a realistic option if you’re contributing to an edited volume rather than authoring a whole book. For an ECR, that kind of visibility can open doors to collaborations, speaking invitations, and career opportunities you might not have expected.
Book processing charges: your options
Publishing an OA book involves a book processing charge (BPC) — but, like articles, there are several options to cover it.
Institutional support
A growing number of universities maintain dedicated OA book funds, and many of these are increasingly accessible to ECRs. Check with your institution’s library or research office.
Research funders
Some funding bodies allow grants to cover OA book costs, particularly where the publication is a direct output of funded research. If you are applying for a grant, it is worth checking with your funder early, ideally before you finalise your application.
Collaborative funding
For edited books or collaborative projects, BPCs can often be shared across contributing institutions, departments, or co-editors, making what might seem like a high cost more manageable.
Tools and support to help you find funding
Not sure where to start? You’re not alone. OA funding can feel daunting to navigate for the first time, but we’ve built tools and services to make the process easier.
Our journal and funding finder is a quick way of matching your research to the correct Springer journal, as well as exploring the OA funding options available to you. It’s a practical first step if you’re not sure which journal to target or what funding might apply to you.
We also offer a free OA support service. Our team can help you identify funding available through your institution or funder, connect you with your institution’s OA coordinator, guide you through the application process, and even help you demonstrate the benefits of OA to support your application. With more than 350 APC funds available worldwide — across over 170 funders, 130 institutions, and a further 170 institutions distributing OA block grants — you are sure to find the right support.
Getting to grips with your funding options early is a good approach and will help you avoid any unwelcome surprises later.
Where knowledge transforms into action
At Springer, we are more than a publisher — we are a partner to the global research community, genuinely invested in your success. OA is how we make sure your work reaches the audience it deserves: the researchers who will build on it, the practitioners who will use it, and the decision-makers who need it.
Want to find out more? Explore your OA funding options here and find out what support is already available to you.
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Author: Christabell Ndive & Jovial Toh
Christabell Ndive, Senior Marketing Manager based in London, is the chief editor of The Source Blog and oversees the creation and maintenance of community webpages. She has expertise and previous experience in B2C audience marketing. She is focused on exploring new trends and insights in academic research and publishing to ensure “The Source” remains a vital resource for the research community.
Jovial Toh, Senior Marketing Manager in Singapore, supports global organisations in navigating OA publishing trends. With a passion for baking, she infuses creativity into her work, offering researchers practical tools for their OA journey.
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