Research Publishing & Impact: Springer Nature

This capped agreement provides for an allowance of 3509 articles to be published open access in 2078 journal titles by authors from institutions participating in the 2024 agreement, with no transactional APCs. The cap was reached by 29 October so is now closed! From now on must pay their own APC charges.

View the 2024 Otago titles list. Includes annotations for excluded titles.

Article eligibility

Articles accepted from 1/1/2024 are eligible to be published open access under this agreement. 

Article types

The following article types are eligible for open access under this agreement:

• Original Paper – Standard article, generally presenting new results which may also be referred to as Original Research, Original Article, Original Paper or Research Paper.
• Review Paper – Standard article, interpreting previously published results.
• Brief Communication – Short article submitted for rapid publication that exhibits the same structure as a standard article.
• Continuing Education – Article forming integral part of further education (usually medical).

There are no exclusions.

Other charges

Springer Nature does charge additional fees for page and/or colour fees. Authors should always check each journal’s submission guidelines to ensure that they will not be subject to any other fees or charges.

Author eligibility

As defined by the publisher, the eligible author is:

“Eligible Authors” means Affiliated Authors who have (i) signed one of the then current open access publishing agreements used by the publisher of the journal to which the author is submitting an article for publication under an Open Access License; and (ii) for whom the participating institution has confirmed their status as an Affiliated Author. 

“Affiliated Authors” means authors who are teaching and research staff employed by or otherwise accredited to the participating institution or who are students enrolled at or accredited to a participating institution. In the case of articles published by multiple authors only the author corresponding with the Springer Nature at the time of acceptance qualifies as an Affiliated Author.

Responsible corresponding authors must include a participating institution as one of their affiliations to benefit from this agreement. 

Authors will be identified as eligible for open access publishing by their:

• institutional affiliation
• email address
• IP address

Responsible corresponding authors must use their institutional email address when submitting an article for publication. 

Responsible corresponding authors should not use personal email addresses (e.g. Hotmail, Gmail). Doing so may result in delayed approval of the article or the article may not be approved to be published open access under the terms of the agreement. 

Author rights

Articles from authors at participating institutions may be published under the following Creative Commons licenses:

• CC BY

Authors retain all rights as per the CC license.

CC BY is the main licence type offered by Springer Nature journals.  Other CC licences types may be accommodated by request.

The Creative Commons licenses allow reuse (some with conditions) while protecting the authors' rights of acknowledgment as authors. Authors retain copyright.

Researchers who require a CC BY-NC-ND licence should contact the editors for the relevant journal. 

Please note the only option provided for ADIS titles is CC BY-NC. 

Researchers who require other CC BY licence types should contact the editors for the relevant journal.

The Creative Commons licenses allow reuse (some with conditions) while protecting the authors' rights of acknowledgment as authors. 

How to submit your article for open access publishing

The following instructions for authors have been provided by the publisher. Further details are available on the publisher’s website.

The workflow can be broken down to a 5 step process

1. Submission
Manuscript is submitted. Submitting author provides e.g. FundRef and ORCID information. Article category is assigned.
Peer review is conducted.

2. Editorial Acceptance
After editorial acceptance, the corresponding author is able to identify themselves as affiliated to a member institution

3. Identification
Corresponding author identifies themselves as connected to a member institution.  The institution's OA agreement eligibility determines if the journal and article type are in scope for OA publication.  

4. Verification
If eligible, the article details are sent to CAUL for final verification and approval

5. Publication
The author can now complete the remainder of the production process and the article is published open access.

Example screenshot(s):

Archiving in institutional repositories

Through this agreement, the version of record will be available under a CC-BY licence fully open access immediately upon publication. Institutions wishing to re-host the version of record in an institutional repository are free to do so.

Contact details: Springer Nature

Please email orsupport@springernature.com for questions regarding this agreement. Please include your full name, institution, article title, journal name and DOI (if available), and state the reason for your enquiry.

Management of the allowance of included articles

• The allowance is allocated to the CAUL Consortium as a whole, not to individual institutions.
• CAUL National Office will approve articles for publication under the agreement. Institutions will only need to intervene in instances where further information is needed to ascertain if the article and/or author is eligible. 
• It is expected that the threshold of included articles will be reached later in 2024.
• Once the threshold of included articles is reached, authors of any additional articles accepted in 2024 may choose to publish articles as "closed access" or to pay an APC for the article to be published open access.
• The allowance applies to articles accepted in the subscription year and resets at the beginning of the next year. If the allowance is exceeded in 2024, open access publishing without transactional APCs will recommence in January 2025 under the Read & Publish agreement for 2025.
• As the year progresses, information about when the threshold of included articles is expected to be reached will be posted to this guide. Content Coordinators will also be updated on a regular basis.

Archiving in institutional repositories

Through this agreement, the version of record will be available under a CC-BY licence fully open access immediately upon publication. Institutions wishing to re-host the version of record in an institutional repository are free to do so.