Empowering research in the United States (US) through open access agreements

Author: Jovial Toh

Across the United States, funders and academic institutions are increasingly recognizing the value of open access (OA) publishing to scholarly research. Meanwhile, higher readership, citations, and visibility are leading to enthusiastic adoption of OA among US researchers.

A key driver of this growth is OA agreements, such as transformative agreements (TAs). Springer Nature agreements now support researchers from over 3,700 institutions worldwide, including nearly 400 in the US. In this blog, we’ll explore how participating institutions are benefiting from these agreements, and why they represent a vital step toward sustainable OA.

What are OA agreements?

OA agreements, including TAs, are a way for institutions to support a transition to OA. By consolidating funding and providing a clear view of publishing costs, TAs maintain essential access to subscription research while significantly expanding opportunities for researchers to publish their work openly, ultimately advancing science and scholarship for everyone.

The University of California’s experience with OA agreements

The California Digital Library (CDL) was our first US partner on an OA agreement in 2020. CDL’s OA agreements cover over 2,200 hybrid journals and 500 fully OA journals across Springer Nature's portfolio. Since 2022, this has included Nature, Nature Communications, Scientific Reports and the Nature Research journals. A case study examining data from 2021 and 2022 highlights the strong impact CDL’s agreements have had on both University of California (UC) researchers and the wider scholarly community:

• More opportunities to publish OA: In 2022, OA article output by UC authors grew by 15% compared to the previous year. CDL’s Mathew Willmott, Assistant Director for Open Access Agreements, noted how the agreement improves author service for UC researchers: “…because their research will be read and used in more places. These include public policy uses, or individual patients reading medical journals for conditions they have, or even researchers in less developed nations that wouldn't have access to content.” 
• Increased reach for published articles: OA articles published by UC authors through the Springer TA reached over 3.6 million downloads globally in 2022, an increase of 120% from 2021. This, as Mathew Willmott noted, benefits UC authors in reaching a broader, more diverse community of readers but also, as another case study interviewee commented, it increases institutional reputation as a whole: “From a broader perspective, if you accumulate that greater attention on our work, and that greater citation advantage; that ought to have a positive impact on things like university rank. 30% of the Times Higher World University Rankings are based upon citations. The prestige, the benefit, from being in a highly ranked university - those are the benefits to my community of publishing OA.” 

How can your institution benefit from participating in OA agreements?

1. Centralizing payments and reducing administration

TAs offer a route to provide your researchers with funds for OA while maintaining subscription access at a predictable and scalable cost. Lyrasis, who commenced their TA with us in 2024, noted the importance of cost management in their negotiation with Springer Nature in a recent case study, explaining there is no additional budget to spend on furthering the cause of OA.

Lyrasis’ agreement also underscores how TAs enable more equitable distribution of funding, enabling smaller colleges and previously underrepresented universities to benefit from OA for the first time. That includes historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) like Grambling State University. Adrienne Webber, Dean of the University Digital Library at Grambling State explained the groundbreaking opportunities this has brought for students and faculty in our recent case study.

Other analysis of TAs has noted the increased benefits of TAs for underrepresented disciplines, like the humanities and social sciences (HSS), and for early career researchers, who often lack access to independent funds. Across our TAs, OA uptake continues to be highest in HSS disciplines.

2.  Ensuring an easy, best-in-class OA workflow 

OA agreements offer institutions automated, efficient, and reliable author identification and reporting, which is essential for reducing the administrative burden on library teams and enables them to measure the impact of these deals. 

US institutions have reported that approving eligible articles is a straightforward process: “We are alerted when an article is eligible for the TA, and we will tick a box to confirm that the author is a member of the community,” explained one institution.

In some cases, our automated article approval process makes it even easier for institutions and consortia, with rapid approval of eligible articles improving researcher satisfaction. Lyrasis’s Celeste Feather noted: “I think most of our member institutions’ articles are flowing through the system without a human being having to approve one by one.” 

3. Providing a more streamlined, convenient OA publishing process for your authors

TAs make OA easy for affiliated authors, embedding the option to publish OA within the publication workflow for hybrid journals, and taking out the burden of managing individual payments. For US institutions like Rutgers University (participating in the NERL TA), the benefits to individual researchers are uppermost in the considerations of the library team. Jeff Carroll, Director of Collections Strategy at Rutgers University, explained: “The OA agreement has definitely helped our researchers find expanded opportunities to publish their work OA without paying additional fees and therefore be able to share their work with the world without the typical barriers to access.”

4. Maximizing the visibility, reach and impact of your researchers’ work

While the benefits of OA for individual researchers include increased citations and usage, it is the opportunity to increase reputational impact that institutions also note for TAs. As Adrienne Webber at Grambling State University described, “Just think, as these doors open, it’s giving our students another step to move forward and have opportunities that just haven’t been available.” 

5. Ensure that your authors comply with funding regulations 

Many funders require research to be made immediately OA upon publication (for example, with a Plan S funder’s grant).

Researchers at institutions participating in TAs can benefit hugely from publishing their work Gold OA, gaining increased usage, citations, and visibility. The case studies found that research published under Springer TAs are reaching broader audiences: in 2023, articles published under TAs accounted for 78% of our total hybrid OA usage, with over 70% of that usage coming from anonymous users (outside of IP ranges associated with subscribing universities). Looking at this usage regionally, the growth of usage in Asia and Africa is particularly striking, showing that TAs are diversifying readership beyond countries and institutions that traditionally had access under a subscription model.

Why should you consider an OA agreement?

By expanding access to scholarly content and centralising costs for OA, Springer TAs are enabling institutions to manage costs, increase transparency, and support the growth of OA. They are also serving as a critical tool for increasing equity worldwide. We remain convinced of the efficacy of TAs as a fast, scalable, and equitable route to global OA, and we continue to negotiate agreements that are adapted to meet regional needs.

We believe that TAs are essential to creating a more accessible research landscape in the US and beyond. TAs enable more articles to be published gold OA, delivering superior value, usage and reach, as well as equity for OA publishing, at scale and speed. 

If your organization is interested in learning more about these opportunities, contact us.

Related content

• Accelerating open access at scale: Key insights for research librarians
• OA agreement stories: Dr Deepali Kuberkar, Tata Memorial Hospital
• To publish OA, what institutional support do Chinese researchers need most?
• How perceptions of open access in China are changing
• OA agreement stories: University of Miami
• Transitioning to open access: Reflections from three US organizations
• Librarians in the age of open access: An evolving role

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