Appendix: Methodology and poll

Further information on the quantitative data analysis shown in this report follows below.

All publication data shared reflects internal records from Springer Nature publisher agreement tracking. This was used to analyse overall growth of OA, and growth trends by discipline.

To understand the benefits of reading access by member institutions, we analysed the reading component of the agreement by the case study consortia and their use of subscribed journals from 2022 to June 2024. Usage data is reported using the COUNTER 5 compliant metric Total Item Requests. Usage for each year of the TA reflects the changes in the reading list titles and in participating members.

To understand the impact of greater OA article usage through agreements, we analysed the number of OA articles in hybrid journals published by active members under Springer TAs from 2020 to April 2024. Usage data for these articles was gathered from 2020 to April 2024 using the COUNTER 5-compliant metric Total Item Requests.

Anonymous usage is classified as requests by users who have not been recognised by Springer Nature Link as authenticated users. Recognised usage is classified as requests by users who have been recognised by Springer Nature Link authentication processes such as IP address, federated access, Google CASA etc.

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