Springer Nature and the UKRI Open Access Policy
14th April 2022
The HE Sector and Jisc are currently in negotiation with Springer Nature to secure a transitional agreement which also includes Nature branded and Palgrave journals. The University currently has the Springer Compact agreement in place which allows both read access and publishing in most hybrid (subscription) Springer Nature journals. However, this agreement does not cover Nature-branded or Palgrave titles.
Springer Nature have stated that they will guarantee a compliant route to publication for UKRI-funded corresponding authors submitting to these titles from 1 April until 31 December 2022 while negotiations are underway.
For assistance with submissions please contact the open access team.
UKRI-funded researchers at University of Aberdeen should deposit a copy of the author's accepted manuscript in Pure/AURA under the CC BY Creative Commons licence immediately on publication in accordance with Route 2 (#6, p.2) of the UKRI open access policy. The below statement should be included with any submission informing the publisher of the authors intention to make any resulting accepted manuscript available under the CC BY licence.
"For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising’‘
See below for the most recent announcement from Jisc and Springer Nature.
Jisc statement on the eligibility of Nature, Nature research, Palgrave journals to use UKRI open access funding
UK institutions are in negotiation with Springer Nature to secure a transitional open access agreement for the Nature, Nature research journals and Palgrave journals. A proposal that meets the requirements of the sector has not yet been provided; the latest proposal, for an agreement to start in January 2023, was unanimously rejected by the UUK Jisc content negotiation strategy group and Jisc content expert group.
In accordance with UKRI OA policy, whilst Springer Nature provides a compliant route to OA publishing in Nature, Nature research journals and Palgrave journals via immediate publishing of the Version of Record OA under a CC BY licence, authors (and their institutions) are not able to use UKRI OA funds to pay for APCs in these titles as they are hybrid journals and ‘not part of a transitional arrangement that meets the sector’s requirements’.
Springer Nature is seeking to register their Nature, Nature research journals and Palgrave journals as Jisc approved Transformative Journals (TJs) and ‘guarantee a compliant route to publication for UKRI-funded corresponding authors submitting to these titles from 1st April until 31st December 2022 enabling us to register them as Jisc-approved Transformative Journals.’
This means that the publication charges of up to €9500 are not currently eligible to be supported using UKRI’s open access funds.
Whilst negotiations for a transitional agreement are ongoing, we hope to secure an arrangement for these titles that provides a compliant route for UKRI funded authors, but which does not compel an author or an institution to pay publication charges.
Authors can check the status of Nature, Nature Research journals and Palgrave journals at: Sherpa and JCT.
Statement issued by Springer Nature 1 April 2022
Springer Nature shares UKRI and Jisc’s goals of enabling a full transition to immediate OA for primary research.
UKRI-funded authors submitting to Springer Nature journals within our existing Jisc Springer Compact transformative Agreement (TA) as well as our fully OA journals can continue to publish in these titles and utilise UKRI OA funds.
For our journals which are currently not part of our TA with Jisc (Nature, Nature research journals, Palgrave journals), discussions are continuing with UK institutions and Jisc, with the aim of having a TA agreement in place from January 2023.
We appreciate however that the lack of a formally agreed funding mechanism for these titles from 1st April will be concerning for potential authors and so, in recognition of our desire to put in place a transformative agreement with UK institutions, Springer Nature will guarantee a compliant route to publication for UKRI-funded corresponding authors submitting to these titles from 1 April until 31 December 2022, enabling us to register them as Jisc-approved Transformative Journals.
As a result, these authors will be able to publish in compliance with UKRI policy and may even use available funds if desired to make the final published version immediately available.
