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