Maximum number of free open access articles at Springer Nature has been reached

What are the consequences?

If your manuscript is accepted between early November, 2024 and 1 January 2025, Springer will still offer to publish your article Open Access, but the costs will no longer be covered by the consortium agreement.

If you still want of need to publish Open Access immediately, you can do so by choosing "Publish Open Access”. You will then receive an invoice.

Alternatively, you can publish your article under the Springer subscription model. To do this, select 'Publish subscription' and then consider additional methods to make your publication openly accessible. These "green" open-access options are explained in more detail below.

Look for alternative funding of immediate open access publishing

If you opt for immediate Open Access publishing – e.g. because this required by your funder - consider paying the associated APC (Article Processing Charge) from other sources, such as your research grant or research budget. If you’re currently preparing your manuscript, a new Open Access quota will be available as of 1 January 2025 for articles accepted by Springer for 2025 publication.

Delayed (green) Open Access publishing in Springer Nature

You can also choose to publish your article under the Springer subscription model and make it Open Access at no cost after an embargo period. Initially, your article will be behind a paywall, but it will become freely accessible—without an open (CC) license—after the embargo. This can be done in two ways:

• By using the Taverne Amendment (article 25fa) of the Dutch Copyright law. For WU authors, the opt-out route is in place. For WR authors, the opt-in route is available only after they fill in the online participation form. Before
  filling in the form, first check whether you fulfil the Taverne requirements.

• By self-archiving the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM). Please email the AAM of your article to the Library upon publication, and include the DOI if available. We'll make the AAM available in Research@WUR when the publisher’s embargo period expires.

Background

Dutch universities, university medical centers, and KNAW institutes have agreements with publishers allowing articles to be published Open Access at no cost for authors. The agreement with Springer Nature covered a maximum of 2067 articles for 2024.

Stay informed

In the WUR journal browser, you can find the applicable APC discounts per journal and check the current status of each agreement.

You can also sign up for a national ‘notify-me service’. You can use this service to receive updates about other publishers with a maximum number of open-access publications.

Support

If you have any questions, please contact the Open Access team of WUR Library. We're happy to help you.