Library, Research
SpringerNature: annual cap for open access articles reached - avoid extra charges
Several agreements between the Dutch Universities (UNL) and academic publishers have set an annual cap: a maximum number of articles that can be published per year in open access at no cost for the authors. After reaching the cap for Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) in October, we have now also hit the cap for SpringerNature.
Until the end of the calendar year, SpringerNature will invoice individual authors for open access fees after publishing. The Taylor & Francis and Oxford University Press caps will probably be reached in the second half of November. Make sure you do not inadvertently receive a publishing bill.
What to do if your article has been accepted by SpringerNature?
If your article gets accepted for publication by SpringerNature or LWW between 5 November and 31 December 2024 – regardless of the date of original submission – the publisher will charge the author for the publication fees. Articles that get accepted from 1 January 2025 onwards will be covered by next year’s agreement.
You can still choose to publish your article in open access at SpringerNature or LWW, but only if you can cover the open access fees through, for instance, your research grant or your institute. The University and LUMC do not have a central budget to cover these publication fees.
If you cannot cover the fees for open publication, you can publish your article with SpringerNature or LWW in toll access. There are then alternative routes toward making your article open access:
- Upload an author’s manuscript to the university’s Scholarly Publications repository, via LUCRIS (with possible embargo period depending on the publisher’s conditions);
- Use of the Taverne-amendment in the Dutch Copyright Act, which allows open access six months after the article is published.
Leiden University Libraries’ webpages on Open Access list all available options.
Please note: external research funders may have set specific conditions for publishing, which differ per project type and time frame. It is important to comply with these conditions. To help you navigate the options available, we strongly recommend all authors whose manuscript is accepted by SpringerNature or LWW after 4 November to contact the Centre for Digital Scholarship’s Open Access Team: openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl
Notification service
Be the first to know when the publishing caps for Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press, ACS or other publishers have been reached. Register for the notification service to receive updates on the agreements and their impending caps.
Questions?
For any questions about publishing in open access, please don’t hesitate to contact the Centre for Digital Scholarship’s Open Access Team, via openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl.