How to publish open access with fees covered

Researchers at more than 3,450 institutions are benefiting from transformative agreements (TAs) with Springer Nature—and that number is growing. These agreements cover the open access (OA) publishing costs for authors affiliated with a participating institution, while transforming research publishing to OA for more and more researchers. But what does that really mean?

Why OA

Since the end of the 1990s when BMC first pioneered sustainable OA, evidence has shown how OA publishing boosts research visibility, use, citations, and impact. According to our analysis, there is a clear advantage in reach and impact for articles published OA in hybrid journals compared to non-OA articles in the same journals.

Going for gold: exploring the reach and impact of gold open access articles in hybrid journals  

And because of our open access agreements, researchers regardless of academic discipline can benefit from increased visibility of their work, without having to pay the article processing charges (APCs) from their research budgets (or their own pocket) since the costs are handled centrally. 

“The processing of the open access fee under the Austria Transformative Agreement was very simple. Springer Nature told me that they would contact the representative of my university and within one or two days, I got the confirmation that my university would pay the open access fee. I was expecting there would be a lot of administration involved, but actually it was incredibly quick.”

David F. J. Campbell, Researcher and Lecturer at the University for Continuing Education Krems and Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Vienna

“Regarding my experience with publishing under the HEAL-LINK transformative agreement, I opted to publish my research open access so that my work will be disseminated to a wider audience. My experience publishing OA was very satisfactory, as the processes were easy to follow and fast, and the publishing fees were all covered by the agreement.”

Dr Eleni Peristeri, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Our TAs now cover over 6 continents and a diverse variety of countries—from the UK to Greece, Germany to the US, Canada to Colombia, Australia to Japan and Egypt.

Some of our most recently signed agreements include:

• Our first TA in Southern Africa with SANLiC (South African National Library and Information Consortium). It includes all 28 member institutions as well as the Universities of Botswana and Namibia. 
• Further agreements across North America including all 68 members of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), Carnegie Mellon University and Northeastern University.
• Our first TA in Mexico with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
• New agreements in Europe with the FCCN / b-on consortium in Portugal, the NTK: Czech National Library of Technology in Czechia, the CTK consortium in Slovenia and the Royal Danish Library in Denmark.
• Our first TA in Japan with 10 institutions participating in an innovative pilot.
• Our second TA in Australia with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
• Our fifth TA for the highly prestigious Nature and Nature research journals with Swiss universities and a renewal of its wider agreement.

Publishing under an open access agreement 

Our best-in-class workflow reduces administration and ensures rapid publication for authors. Once your article has been accepted, you will be asked to confirm your institution. If you are identified as eligible and your article is approved, you can publish OA with fees covered. Your OA article will be free for anyone in the world to read, share and re-use.

Step 1: Article accepted

Article is accepted for publication in a hybrid or fully OA journal. As the corresponding author, you will receive an email invitation to complete the publication process for your article.

Step 2: Article identification

There are 3 ways that we can recognize your eligibility for coverage under the agreement:

Step 3: Publishing OA

For articles that have been identified as eligible* to be covered by an OA agreement, you will be presented with confirmation that you can publish OA with fees covered.

Step 4: License

You will be asked to agree to an OA creative commons license (CC BY for the majority of Springer Nature journals)^ on behalf of all co-authors.

Step 5: Publication

We ask all institutions to approve articles within 3 days to ensure rapid publication for our authors. Once approved, the article is published immediately OA. The OA article is freely available for anyone in the world to read, share and re-use.  

_{*OA agreement specific eligibility check: in-scope journals and article types.}

_{^Other licenses available on request}

Find out more about OA agreements and whether you may be entitled to publish OA with your fees covered.