The story of Springer’s first open access book

This article was originally published in 2019 and was last updated in November 2025.

Author: Christina Emery

Head of Thought Leadership Programmes

Did you know that it has been 15 years since Springer published it’s first OA book? To commemorate this landmark, we feature the story of our first open access book and the benefits of publishing open access. 

A year before the official launch of its OA books programme in August 2012, Springer published its first OA book: Future Internet Assembly 2011: Achievements and Technological Promises. Alfred Hofmann, then editor and now retired since 2020, describes the challenges of creating the first OA book.
 

“The project was difficult to realize within Springer as nobody had experience regarding OA book publishing at that time.”

This was before many publishers had begun to offer OA for books. But there was a definite need to support OA publication: 

“The Future Internet Assembly series was a sequence of conferences sponsored by the European Community, which already at that time advocated OA publication of research results developed with EC-sponsored activities.“

- Alfred Hofmann, Former VP at Springer in 2017
 

“Open access is a requirement for all projects funded by Horizon 2020 […] so it was imperative to use the open access model in order to obtain a sufficient large number and high quality contributions from authors.” 

- Anastasius Gavras, contributing editor of Future Internet Assembly 2011 

With this need in mind, Springer challenged the status quo, successfully changing internal workflows and establishing a pricing model through a book processing charge (BPC), as well as approving use of a Creative Commons license so that Gavras and co-editors could publish Future Internet Assembly 2011 in compliance with their funder’s open access policy. 

Experiencing the benefits of open access 

Compliance with funder requirements is just one of the many reasons for publishing a book open access. There are many benefits for an author choosing to publish their research as an OA book, from increased discoverability and visibility, immediate online access, widened readership outside of their traditional research community, increased potential for collaboration, or career progression. Gavras confirmed that in the case of Future Internet Assembly 2011: 

“Open access contributed to increased visibility of the published works, and to the level of citations per chapter.” 

Open access at Springer 

In addition to Springer Nature Link, our comprehensive online delivery platform, all Springer Nature Open Access books and chapters are listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) and, where appropriate, PubMed’s NCBI Bookshelf. We also work with Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar. Inclusion on these sites enhances the visibility and discoverability of authors’ work. As a result, open access books on Springer Nature Link receive 10x the downloads, 2.4x the citations, and 10x the online mentions of our non-OA books.  

Our OA books reach readers in 61% more countries globally than our non-OA books, and a  majority  of  these  additional  countries are low and middle-low  income  countries. See paper/infographics here. For example, the Future Internet Assembly 2011 has now reached over a million downloads and almost 70 citations via Springer Nature Link.  

According to the download data available from the book’s homepage, this works out at around 1,116,665 downloads of the full book (as of 31 January 2026). Gavras has since published further open access books with Springer for these reasons.

Open access books today

Since its launch fifteen years ago, Springer Nature has published over 4,000 open access books across its Springer, Palgrave and Apress imprints, covering a wide range of disciplines within science, technology, medicine, humanities and social sciences.  The notable open access books list includes author Gerard t’Hooft, winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics and co-author Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and winner of the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award. 

Springer Nature OA books are subject to the same high level peer-review, production and publishing processes followed by traditional Springer Nature books and they are freely and immediately available online for anyone to download. The BPC covers all the costs of commissioning, copyediting, proofreading, production, dissemination and promotion. Readers worldwide can share and reuse books and chapters published open access using the applied Creative Commons License, ensuring maximum reuse as well as enabling authors to retain copyright for their work.
 

Interested in experiencing the benefits of open access publishing? 
Get in touch with a Springer, Palgrave, or Apress publishing editor to find out more.