What is OhioLINK's Springer open access agreement?
OhioLINK has negotiated an upgraded agreement that offers access to over 700 additional electronic journals from Springer Nature along with open access publishing benefits.
Starting in January 2024, authors at most OhioLINK member institutions will have the ability to publish open access (OA) journal articles in eligible hybrid journals published by Springer Nature (including many Springer, Palgrave, Adis, and academic journals at nature.com) at no additional cost to either the author or the institution. Nature portfolio journals such as Nature itself and Scientific American are not included. Fully open access journals are not included.
With this agreement, there is a maximum number of articles that may be published open access across all OhioLINK institutions. Once the limit is reached, the option to publish articles open access at no cost under the agreement will no longer be available. Authors may choose to publish behind the subscription paywall or to pay the APC for open access on their own.
OhioLINK's agreement with Springer gives member authors and institutions the option to publish open access in eligible journals without paying any APC. Open access publication often also includes licensing the work to allow for reuse, such as the use of Creative Commons licenses See Springer Copyright & Licensing.
OhioLINK's open access deal with Springer applies only to articles published in eligible hybrid journals. "Hybrid" means that the journal publishes articles that are available both by subscription and through open access. Fully open access journal titles accept only articles that will be published as open access. For more information about open access, see The Fundamentals of Open Access & Open Research.
Who is eligible to publish open access under this agreement?
In order to be eligible to publish open access at no cost in a Springer journal under this agreement, the corresponding author of the article (see below for definition) must be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to OhioLINK’s Electronic Journal Center (EJC), a full text searchable database of electronic journal articles from top scholarly publishers.
There is a maximum number of articles across all OhioLINK institutions that may be published as open access. Should this limit be reached, authors will no longer see the option to request their article be published as open access at no charge under this deal. When that happens, authors can choose to publish as open access and pay the Article Publication Charge (APC), or choose to publish as a traditional subscription-access only article. See information about APCs for hybrid journals in the Hybrid Journals section on Springer's Open Access Journals Page.
The corresponding author is the person who agrees to handle the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process. Providing Springer with the name of your OhioLINK-affiliated institution and an institutional email address is part of the process for confirming institution affiliation. Each article is reviewed to verify eligibility.
When can I publish open access articles in Springer hybrid journals?
To publish an article as open access in an eligible Springer journal without paying any Article Publication Charge (APC), the request for coverage of the APC must be approved between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2026. Corresponding authors are presented with the option to request to publish their article as open access under this agreement following acceptance for publication by the journal.
What kind of articles are eligible for open access publishing under this agreement? Which journals are eligible?
The following article types are eligible for the hybrid open access publishing benefits:
There are over 2,000 eligible hybrid journals from Springer, Adis, Palgrave and academic journals at Nature.com. Nature portfolio journals such as Nature itself and Scientific American are not included. Fully open access journals are not included. For the most up-to-date list, check the Excel List of eligible hybrid journals on the Open Access Agreement for OhioLINK page.
Corresponding authors affiliated with an eligible institution who are publishing an eligible article type in an eligible journal are offered the option to publish their article as open access under the agreement.
When a corresponding author's article has been approved for publication in an eligible Springer journal, they are offered the option to publish their article as open access. In order to be offered the option of publishing open access at no charge, the annual cap limit must not have been reached.
Is there a limit to how many articles can be published as open access under this agreement?
There is an annual limit to the number of articles to be published as open access under this agreement across all OhioLINK member institutions, based on historical publishing trends. Should the article limit be reached, authors will no longer see the option to request to publish their article as open access under this agreement. Authors can then choose to publish open access by paying the APC or they also could choose to publish their article as a traditional subscription-access only article at no cost to them. See Springer's Open Access webpage for information about list price APCs.
What information and training are available for faculty and authors?
Springer offers resources for authors interested in publishing their articles open access on their web site:
OhioLINK has also created resources for this and its other open access agreements: