Open Research for Librarians

OA 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.

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).

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.

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

Resources & highlights

The future of open access books white paper

A global Springer Nature survey of more than 2,500 academic book authors provides in-depth insights into attitudes towards open access.

The OA effect white paper

First major analysis of OA vs. non-OA book usage, benefits, challenges, and support needed for authors and funders