First Nature OA Agreement in the Americas Announced

NISO Member News

New York, NY | July 27, 2022

Building on the success of their 2020 landmark agreement, Springer Nature and the University of California (UC) announce that UC authors will now have the option to publish their research open access (OA) in the prestigious Nature titles.

Through an extension of the 2020 deal, UC researchers will receive financial support toward open access publishing costs when publishing in the Nature portfolio, in addition to the titles covered in the original agreement. In 2021, this shared funding model resulted in a three-fold increase in UC open access articles in Springer Nature’s portfolio of over 2,200 hybrid journals and over 500 Springer Nature fully OA journals. UC researchers published over 1,300 OA articles in Springer Nature journals in 2021, up from 400 in 2020. UC is now on track for an even greater number of open access articles to be published in 2022 and beyond.

The extension to the agreement begins August 1, 2022 and runs through December 31, 2024,  and includes Nature, the Nature research journals, Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. UC students, faculty and researchers will also retain reading access to their currently licensed Nature portfolio journals.  

Carolyn J. Honour, Springer Nature Chief Commercial Officer commented: “Springer Nature’s partnership with the University of California has been such a success to date that we are delighted to extend our collaboration in the form of this first publishing agreement in the U.S. for the Nature research journals. After already seeing a tripling of OA articles published by UC since our landmark 2020 agreement, it has been clear that together we are supporting the transition to gold OA and all that is the future of open science.”

Jeff MacKie-Mason, University Librarian, Chief Digital Scholarship Officer and Professor at UC Berkeley and co-chair of UC’s publisher negotiation team commented: “UC is thrilled to continue serving as leaders in the open access movement on behalf of researchers and people across the globe. This deal will open up critical knowledge in some of the world’s most respected scientific journals, helping advance solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time.”

The agreement between Springer Nature and UC is structured with a shared funding model that allows both library and research funds to contribute toward the Article Processing Charge (APC) cost.  As with the original agreement, the UC libraries will automatically pay $1,000 toward the APC for all articles by UC corresponding authors that are accepted for publication in the Nature portfolio hybrid and OA journals covered by the agreement. Authors are asked to contribute the remainder of the APC from their research funds.

UC and Springer Nature share a commitment to make it easier and more affordable for all authors to publish open access, regardless of discipline, location or funding.

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About Springer Nature

For over 180 years Springer Nature has been advancing discovery by providing the best possible service to the whole research community. We help researchers uncover new ideas, make sure all the research we publish is significant, robust and stands up to objective scrutiny, that it reaches all relevant audiences in the best possible format, and can be discovered, accessed, used, re-used and shared. We support librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; and provide quality publishing support to societies. 

As a research publisher, Springer Nature is home to trusted brands including Springer, Nature Portfolio, BMC, Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American. For more information, please visit springernature.com and @SpringerNature.