As of January 4, 2021, University of California (UC) corresponding authors will benefit from the university’s transformative open access agreement with Springer Nature, making it easier and more affordable to publish their research as open access. Upon acceptance of an article, UC authors will now have their article designated for open access publishing by default, with funding support from the UC libraries.
Announced last June, the agreement will support UC affiliated authors whose articles are accepted by journals in the Springer portion of the Springer Nature portfolio, including Springer, Adis, and Palgrave Macmillan titles, as well as academic journals on nature.com. The integration of Nature-branded journals into the agreement is expected in 2022. The agreement also includes reading access and perpetual rights to more than 1,000 journals in Springer Nature’s portfolio to which UC did not previously subscribe.
Under the agreement, the UC Libraries will pay the first $1,000 of the open access fee, formally called an article processing charge or APC, on behalf of all UC authors. Authors who do not have research funds available can request that the UC Libraries pay the entire open access fee, ensuring that lack of research funds does not present a barrier for UC authors who wish to publish open access in these journals. As with other similar publishing agreements, authors may choose to opt out of open access publishing if they prefer to publish their article on a subscription (pay-to-read) basis.
More details about the Springer Nature open access publishing process and the agreement in general are available on the UC Office of Scholarly Communication’s website and FAQ page. UC San Diego authors are encouraged to contact the Library’s scholarly communications librarian Allegra Swift with any questions.
Photo Credit: Journal images courtesy of Springer Nature