Open access journals & books

Open access book partnerships

Springer Nature publishes open access (OA) books and chapters under its Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and Apress imprints. We helped to pioneer OA book publishing, first piloting OA publication for books in 2011. Today our OA book portfolio includes over 2,000 titles with more than 200 million chapter downloads.

We are committed to working and partnering with funders, institutions, and organisations worldwide on OA publications to advance discovery and support the publication of cutting-edge research across a wide range of areas in science, technology, medicine (STM), and humanities and social sciences (HSS).

Benefits of partnering on OA book publishing with us

OA increases visibility and discoverability

Our OA books and chapters on average receive 10 times more downloads, 2.4 times more citations and 10 times more online mentions compared to non OA books, helping you to better reach your audiences. 

Benefits of partnering on OA book publishing with us

OA helps to reach a more diverse readership

On average, our OA books reach 61% more countries than non-OA books, with most of the additional countries being amongst those classed as LIC and LMIC by the World Class Bank. In addition to enhancing usage in countries underrepresented in global scholarship, OA also enhances the global usage of scholarship about underrepresented countries.1

OA helps to reach a more diverse readership

1Nature, Springer; Pyne, Ros; Emery, Christina; Lucraft, Mithu; Ozaygen, Alkim; Montgomery, Lucy; et al. (2020): Infographic summary of ' Diversifying readership through open access: A usage analysis for OA books' white paper. figshare. Media. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.12933131.v1

Other benefits

  • Adheres to the high standards expected of all Springer Nature titles with the same rigorous peer-review process
  • Available online in multiple formats (HTML, PDF, ePub, and MOBI) and in print 
  • Publishing partner and/or authors retain copyright
  • Compliance with funder OA mandates
  • Publication under the most open Creative Commons licence, CC BY 4.0 (other licences available on request)
  • Range of attractive partnering options to fund publication of OA books
  • Options to include funder/partner branding 

Our partners

To help authors choose OA, we offer agreements that enable individual institutions to cover OA publishing costs for affiliated authors or for authors with research grants from their institution. If your institution has an agreement with Springer Nature, you may publish your book OA at no cost or in some cases with the costs partially funded. Please get in touch with us to find out more or click on one the links below. 

Ways of partnering with us

  • Institutional partnerships: Institutions or organisations can fund OA book publications by selected affiliated authors.
  • Sponsorship opportunities: Organisations can fund OA book publications in self-selected categories.
  • OA Book series: Institutions or organisations can fund OA publications in selected book series.

Discover our selected OA book series

New Content Item
New Content Item
New Content Item
New Content Item
New Content Item
Simula Research Laboratory
Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing
Fully open access
Fondation pour une culture de sécurité industrielle (FonCSI)
SpringerBriefs in Safety Management
Fully open access
Max Planck Institute
Demographic Research Monographs
Fully open access		International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)
IEA Research for Education
Fully open access
International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE)
IMISCOE Research Series
Hybrid open access

What our partners say

Through this agreement with Springer Nature, we further advance one of our core missions — to support Max Planck scientists in the dissemination of their research. By covering a significant share of the open access book publication costs, we are enabling more of our authors to publish their work openly, increasing their readership and impact.

- Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at the MPDL

UNESCO, an international leader in the field of open access, is proud to join forces with a key global player in the dissemination of high-quality knowledge and expertise.

- Ian Denison, Chief of Publishing at UNESCO

Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing allows rapid, open access, publication of compact and high quality research reviews to a broad audience of readers.

- Professor Aslak Tveito, CEO, Simula Research Laboratory

We are proud to work with Springer to publish our open access IEA Research for Education series. The partnership has helped us to disseminate our research insights to new audiences while also providing a valuable opportunity for authors to analyze study results in more detail. IEA has always been committed to making the results and in-depth analyses of our comparative research projects freely available, something which is even more important now in the context of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and particularly SDG4 of making quality evidence available to all. We are delighted to work with such a respected and highly regarded partner who shares our commitment to promoting open access publications. Working with the Springer team is a pleasure and we have gratefully benefited from their expert advice and guidance. 

- Dr Dirk Hastedt, IEA Executive Director