Supporting access to research around the world

Author: Thea Sherer

Director of Sustainability

This week, members of Research4Life (R4L) gather in Nairobi for the General Partners Meeting (GPM), where they will share updates and discuss strategic priorities for the future of the programme. 

At Springer Nature, we are committed to supporting initiatives that promote research excellence and foster knowledge-sharing worldwide. Equitable access to research and publishing is vital to global information exchange, which is why we are founding members and proud supporters of R4L. 

What is Research4Life?

Since 2004, R4L has provided institutions in low and lower-middle income countries with free or low cost online access to subscription research content, plus a range of other support and services to enable more equitable access to publishing. 

It’s having an effect: a study from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the University of the Bundeswehr Munich and the German Economic Institute found that free or low-cost online access to scientific publications — as provided by Research4Life programs — boosts scientific output by up to 75% in low- and middle-income countries. Involvement in international clinical trials also grew by over 20%, suggesting that research and innovation in local institutions improved too. 

In 2022, they launched the Country Connectors programme involving a local lead raising awareness of R4L in ways that are tailored to the local scholarly community and their preferred languages. They also act as a point of contact for concerns or enquiries. It’s now available in eleven countries. 

Springer Nature and Senegal

Senegal was the second French speaking country to join the programme in 2023, thanks to a three-year grant from Springer Nature. Since work started there, they’ve sent representation to the previous GPM, started to identify gaps in institutions that need to register for R4L and conducted a user needs survey designed to customise the R4L offering in line with demand. At a national level, Research4Life was allocated a session at the Senegalese Consortium for Higher Education and Research Libraries (COBESS) workshop in November 2023. 

The Research4Life programme tracks usage of content month to month, and despite being early days, we are seeing an uptick of access requests in Senegal. Output and citations from the country also grew from 2022 to 2023, and we hope to be able to see that trend continue over the three years of funding. 

What else are we doing to ensure equitable access to research?

The global pool of knowledge expands fastest and for the widest benefit when science is open: transparent, trustworthy, accessible and available to all to use, reuse and build on. The foundation for this is OA.

We know that some researchers are concerned about whether the sustainable transition to OA might create new inequities because of the need to fund publishing costs via article processing charges (APCs). This is something we have a particular focus on at Springer Nature, and we are actively and creatively deploying a number of levers to ensure all are able to benefit from OA: 

• We believe transformative agreements (TAs) are one of the strongest levers at our disposal in increasing representation in OA publishing given they allow all authors from participating institutions to publish OA regardless of funding or discipline. 
• Our new Cureus journals use an innovative publishing model that allows well-drafted, relevant submissions to publish OA for free – opening OA publishing up to a wider audience, including non-academics. 
• We also publish a number of fully-sponsored OA journals, which enable authors to publish OA free of charge.
• In low and lower-middle-income countries (LICs and LMICs), we operate an APC waiver and discount policy. Our fully OA journals waived fees of over €26 million to authors in 2023. This included over €8.5 million for articles with corresponding authors based in countries or regions on the World Bank’s list of LICs and LMICs.
• In addition to our long-standing waiver programme, as of January 2023, primary research by authors from more than 70 LICs or LMICs, accepted for publication in either Nature or one of the Nature research journals can now be published OA at no cost using a dedicated fund. 
• In March this year we launched a country-tiered APC pricing pilot on one of our portfolios. This sees authors automatically allocated a % of the APC based on their country of residence and aims to make OA publishing more accessible to all authors, regardless of location.

Our commitment to enabling equitable OA forms part of a broader effort to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) across the research publishing landscape. We work to eliminate barriers to creating, discovering and using knowledge, and we support equitable outcomes in learning and advancing scholarships from young learners to PhD level and beyond. 

To find out more about Springer Nature's work with Research4Life and our commitment to enabling equitable OA, take a look at our Sustainable Business Report 2023 'Open for Progress'.