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OASPA

Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association

Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association

Oaspa News

Member Record: Springer Nature

Title Springer Nature
Class Professional Publisher (Very Large)
URL http://www.springernature.com
Owner Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck and BC Partners. Springer Nature’s open access publishing comprises the BioMed Central, Nature Research, Palgrave Macmillan and Springer imprints.
Address UK: 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
Germany: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany
Copyright and Licensing Journals
• BioMed Central copyright and licensing
• Nature Research and Palgrave Macmillan OA journals copyright and licensing
• Springer Open copyright and licensing

Books
• Palgrave Macmillan OA books copyright and licensing (Palgrave and Springer imprints)
Copyright and Licensing Policy • All BioMed Central, SpringerOpen, and Palgrave Macmillan open access journals and books, and all owned Nature Research open access journals, use the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License by default, to support maximum dissemination and re-use.

• Copyright in any open access article or book published by Springer Nature is retained by the author(s). Authors grant Springer Nature a license to publish the article and identify the appropriate imprint as the original publisher.

• Supplementary data published in BioMed Central journals and metadata in Scientific Data’s Data Descriptors is made available under the CC0 waiver to promote maximum reuse.
Complaint email ORSupport@springernature.com
Complaint policy Complaints are handled on a case-by-case basis.

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection or make a complaint should, in the first instance, contact the journal or book editor. General complaints can be directed to the central customer services teams at the address above.
Publication charge link https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals
Publication charge policy As costs are involved in every stage of the publication process, from peer-review to copy editing and hosting the final article on dedicated servers, authors are asked to pay an article processing charge (APC) or book processing charge (BPC) in order for their article or book to be published open access under a Creative Commons licence.

Journals
Authors publishing in fully open access journals are asked to confirm on submission that they agree to pay the APC, and the APC is payable if and when an article is editorially accepted. In some BioMed Central and Springer Open journals, the APCs are fully or in part covered by a sponsoring organization.

BioMed Central and Springer Open additionally offer an Open Access Membership Programme which enables institutions, societies and funders to actively support open access by removing some or all of the publication cost from their individual researchers.

When publishing in fully open access journals, authors in low-income countries publishing in fully-open access journals are eligible for APC waivers. In addition, discretionary waivers and /or discounts are considered on a case-by-case basis, and may be granted in cases of financial need. See https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/journal-policies/apc-waiver-countries
At some institutions, open access fees in hybrid (Springer Open Choice) journals are covered by Springer Compact agreements.

Books
Authors publishing OA books are asked to pay a BPC following final acceptance of their manuscript for publication and prior to publication of their book.
OASPA Compliant OA Journals 600 fully OA and 2000 hybrid OA
OA articles
approx. number in 12 months		 91k+ OA articles in 2018
OASPA Compliant OA Books 700+ since 2012
Initiatives Open access publishing models and policies have been at the heart of the business development and strategic thinking of the constituent imprints of Springer Nature throughout the last decade and a half. BioMed Central was the first open access publisher, and both Springer and Nature Research have consistently been early movers in embracing OA as a natural consequence of new technologies.

Find out more in our timeline: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/timeline

Sharing our findings with the community: we have undertaken and published a number of white papers that support the case for open access and open research:

- The OA effect: How does open access affect the usage of scholarly books?: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/news-events/all-news/the-oa-effect/15208188

- OA views from library community: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/institutions/2017-librarian-oa-survey

- OA in the UK case study: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/gold-oa-in-the-uk

- Assessing the open access effect for hybrid journals: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/oa-effect-hybrid

- State of open data (in partnership with Digital Science) https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/news-events/all-news/the-state-of-open-data-2018/16216092

- Practical challenges for data sharing: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/news-events/all-news/new-white-paper-on-research-data-sharing/15544872

- 5 essential factors for data sharing: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/open-data/five-essential-factors

Recent developments
In Review: In Review, a new first-of-its-kind author service provides a pre-publication platform, along with other author services and benefits, to open up the submission, review and editorial process. In Review offers a detailed peer review timeline so that authors can easily track the status of their manuscript while it’s out for review, as well as share it with the wider community earlier in the submission and peer review process. https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/media/press-releases/new-author-service-in-review/16592684

Research data services for researchers and institutions. Since 2018 we have launched a number of researcher services that facilitate best practice in data sharing and research data management. This includes:

- Research data helpdesk (free advice service on data policies and best practice on data sharing) https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/research-data/helpdesk

- Research data support (expert metadata curation) https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/research-data/research-data-support

- Research data training (see for example https://group.springernature.com/gp/group/media/press-releases/springer-nature-partners-with-cancer-research-uk/16615026)

- Data availability reporting: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/institutions/research-data-services/data-availability-reporting
Peer review process Peer review processes vary by journal; please consult individual journal websites for details.
• BioMed Central peer review • SpringerOpen peer review • Nature journals peer review
Peer review policy All journal articles and books published by Springer Nature are peer reviewed, including all open access content, and peer review plays an important role as part of our quality assurance. Authors publishing in hybrid journals are not asked to confirm whether they would like to publish their article open access until after it has been accepted, and all submitted articles go through the same rigorous process of editorial consideration and peer review. There is some variation in the peer-review process depending on the journal and academic field.
For example:

• At some journals, including Nature Communications, the peer-review process is run by professional editors who are based in-house.

• Some titles, including all the medical titles in the BMC series journals, ask reviewers to sign their reviews, and the pre-publication history of each paper (submitted versions, reviewer’ reports, authors’ responses) is posted on the web with the published article.

• Journals operating closed peer review may use single- or double-blind peer review; typically this varies according to the convention for their academic field.