On this page you can find out about Springer Nature’s open access (OA) policies for books and chapters published via the immediate ‘gold’ OA and non-open access routes. 

Click here for our OA policies for journal articles.

For information about meeting the OA policies of funders and institutions when publishing with Springer Nature, visit our OA funding support service.

OA licensing and related rights

Open access licensing

Open access (OA) books and chapters published with Springer Nature are published under Creative Commons licences. These provide an industry-standard framework to support re-use of OA material. More information about Creative Commons licence terms is on the Creative Commons website.

You retain copyright of your work for any open access books or chapters you publish with Springer Nature under a Creative Commons licence. When you publish your book or chapter OA, you will sign an OA contract, and usually grant non-exclusive rights to Springer Nature where a CC BY licence is chosen, or where CC BY NC-ND is chosen, you will usually grant exclusive commercial and derivative rights to Springer Nature. 

Should you act in the capacity of your employer, institution, or another legal entity, the copyright can be owned by the legal entity and vested in their name.

If your employer is a government entity (e.g. the Crown/US government), and require a non-standard publishing contract, we can provide you with this prior to publication.

Springer Nature is committed to protecting our authors against infringement of intellectual property, while also considering the sensitivities and concerns of the research community. We achieve this by proactively identifying, monitoring and taking action against potential instances of infringement to ensure that any threats to the intellectual property rights of our authors are targeted, disrupted and, where possible, closed down. 

What OA licences are available for OA books and chapters?

Springer Nature offers CC BY-NC-ND as our default license, and we also offer CC BY. 

CC BYNC-ND - Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivatives. 

The book or chapter can be shared for non-commercial purposes as long as the authors are credited. Permission is needed from Springer Nature for commercial re-use or sharing adapted and derivative versions.  

CC BY - Creative Commons Attribution 

The book or chapter may be shared and adapted for any purpose, including commercially, so long as the authors are credited.  

If you have other OA licence requirements, we are happy to discuss them with you. Please reach out to your editorial contact. 

Rights for reuse 

The table below shows the rights that others have to share and distribute your work, depending on the licence you choose. 

Here are some examples of reuse: 

All Creative Commons licences require the licence to be referenced when sharing the content in whole or in part. 

As an author, in addition to the use cases described in the “Rights for reuse” table above you also have additional rights to make use of your work, which may vary depending on the publishing licence you choose. For more information about permissions and commercial reuse, please consult your contract or speak with your editor. 

Meeting funder and institutional OA licence requirements 

You are advised to check your research funder and institution's OA requirements, to ensure you publish your work under the correct licence needed for compliance. Certain funders require grantees to publish with a specific OA licence. Click here to learn more about funder and institutional OA requirements for books and chapters.  

Where the costs of OA publication are covered by an OA book partnership agreement, the OA licence options available to authors may vary according to the partnership agreement terms. 

If you, or part of your author group, are employees of the European Commission, or an intergovernmental organisation (such as the United Nations, IMF or World Bank) you may need a to publish under a certain type of licence. Springer Nature offers intergovernmental organisation (IGO) versions of Creative Commons licences on request, where required by the author’s employer. Please contact your publishing editor to discuss these requirements. 

Retrospective licence changes

Please note that Creative Commons licences cannot be revoked after publication. Authors of open access books and chapters at Springer or Palgrave Macmillan may not change the Creative Commons licence of their work after publication. However, in exceptional cases, authors of individual chapters may request to have Springer Nature re-publish their work under a different OA licence retrospectively where this is required for funder compliance. Please contact your editorial contact to discuss further. 

Use of third-party material in open access books and chapters

Authors considering publishing their books or chapters via the immediate open access route should carefully consider whether they need to include any third-party material in their manuscript. Third-party material is only acceptable in an open access book or chapter if you: 

• are able to secure the necessary terms to enable such content to be made available in an open access form (ideally the same Creative Commons licence under which the content will be made available, but at a minimum approval from the rightsholder to include the content in an open access book). 
• provide clear captions for all third-party material clearly acknowledging the source and licence terms. 

Please see our dedicated Third-party permissions page for additional guidance on third-party rights.