Empowering research in the USA: Advancing open access for researchers with open access agreements

Author: Jovial Toh

As more and more authors in the USA choose to publish their research open access (OA), it’s impossible to overlook the benefits it brings, from increased visibility, faster progress, and wider opportunities for collaboration. Discover how Springer Nature’s drive to advance OA publishing through OA agreements is shaping the future of research accessibility and what opportunities these bring for authors in the USA.   

The value of open access

As an author, publishing gold OA increases the discoverability and exposure of your work, delivering wider reach, readership, and impact. Publishing OA also supports the open science movement, speeding up innovation, economic and societal impact, and strengthening public trust in science as more people engage with transparent, credible research. All of the above are driving enthusiastic adoption of OA publishing in the USA.

We have championed the value of OA for over 20 years, broadening the availability of OA across our portfolios and establishing multiple routes to make OA widely available to authors worldwide. A prime example is our OA agreements (OAA), which enable authors at participating institutions to select OA without the burden of finding the funds to pay author fees. When you publish gold OA through a Springer Nature OAA, here’s what you can expect:

• Immediate access to your article for all:  we make the authoritative version of an article freely and permanently accessible for everyone, immediately after publication. 
• Increased citation and usage: On average, articles published gold OA achieve 6 times more downloads than non-OA articles, as well as 1.6 times more citations and 4.9 times more Altmetric attention. 
• Enhanced (interdisciplinary) engagement: Content is available to everyone: that includes researchers within your field, interdisciplinary readers, under-resourced communities, and audiences outside academia. This can ultimately culminate in wider collaboration opportunities for you, as one US institution noted in a recent case study: “The more eyes that are on your work, the greater your chance of collaborators, funders, and graduate students all coming your way.”  
• Faster impact: When you publish under a Creative Commons licence, you accelerate the pace of innovation by allowing other researchers to build on your published work, speeding up progress for the benefit of society. When work that has direct relevance to global challenges, like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it becomes even more important to share work openly, as one University of California researcher explained: 
  

“Publishing open access has meant that my article has quickly been used by others in their research and analysis.” 

- Dr. Mihri Ozkan, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Riverside

• Compliance with OA mandates: Publishing OA ensures compliance with national public access policies. This is increasingly significant for researchers in the USA where, for example, the Nelson Memo released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) calls for federally funded publications and their supporting data to be publicly accessible without embargo from December 31, 2025. Even as policies continue to evolve, OA enables you as a researcher to meet these expectations. 

Taking advantage of funding for open access through your institution

It is a key commitment at Springer Nature to make OA available to all. We are increasing our support for researchers through OAAs, working with institutions, funders, and national research organisations to centralise funds to cover the costs of OA publication.

Transformative agreements (TAs) are OAAs that combine journal subscription access along with OA publication costs, providing researchers at participating institutions with broad access to Springer Nature’s journals for their research as well as enabling them to publish OA without individual author charges.  

Researchers from over 3,700 institutions around the world are currently benefiting from a Springer Nature TA, including a number across the USA. We established our first US-based TA in the USA with the California Digital Library in 2020 and continue to negotiate further agreements across the USA, including all 68 members of the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC), to drive publishing equity and funding flexibility for researchers.   

How open access agreements are supporting authors in the USA    

Springer Nature OAAs are creating more opportunities for authors in participating institutions to achieve their research goals with OA. In the case of the University of California, the number of OA articles rose by 15% from 2021 to 2022, thanks to easier access to OA funding through CDL. Meanwhile, authors of these publications experienced significantly higher reach for their research. OA articles published by UC authors through the Springer TA reached over 3.6 million downloads globally. It’s notable that 69% of these downloads came from anonymous users, many of whom would not have had access to this research otherwise. This shows the importance of OAAs in supporting researchers worldwide with improved access to knowledge. 

OAAs are especially impactful for research in humanities and social sciences (HSS), which is traditionally less well-funded. The highest increase in OA growth continues to come from HSS researchers, with 36% uptake in 2023. Over 90% of HSS OA content in our hybrid journals is now published via an OAA or TA, where funding is more equitably distributed across disciplines. 

• In the USA, HSS OA content in hybrid journals has grown from 3% in 2019 to 14% in 2023, driven by OAAs. 

The value of OAAs to researchers is clear: OAAs enable more articles to be published gold OA, delivering efficiency, usage, and reach, as well as equity for OA publishing across disciplines, at scale and speed. We believe TAs are essential to a more accessible research landscape, especially for communities with limited resources, and recognise their vital role in driving the transition to OA at scale. We have published 180,000 articles under TAs since 2015, including 44,500 in 2023.  

Why you should publish under a Springer Nature open access agreement

• Best-in-class workflow: Getting an APC paid via an OAA is seamlessly integrated into the Springer Nature publishing workflows and led by you, the corresponding author.  

“Publishing OA with Springer Nature was also incredibly straightforward. The articles were specified OA once I verified my institutional affiliation,” explains one Rutgers university author.  

• Data sharing support: Our new standardised research data policies and services help researchers understand and meet funder and institutional mandates for sharing your research data. 
• Expanding availability of OAAs in the US: With further launches this year, we are setting the stage for more institutions and researchers to benefit from OA.  

“[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,” explained Jeff Carroll, Director of Collections Strategy at Rutgers University.

Agreements in the USA: 

• Air Force Research Laboratory
• Carnegie Mellon University 
• Carolina Consortium 
• Greater Western Library Alliance
• Illinois State University 
• Lyrasis 
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology 
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory 
• NERL
• Northeastern University 
• OhioLINK
• Rowan University 
• Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium 
• University of California
• Vanderbilt University Nature transformative agreement
• VIVA 

Explore more at Open access agreements: Information for authors