OA transition at Springer Nature

Carrie Webster
Vice President, Open Access

“Around 44% of our primary research articles were published OA in 2023, up from 38% in 2022. This year we hope to reach the 50% OA mark which will be a major milestone for Springer Nature and for mixed-model publishers in general.

We are doing this in several ways, such as growing our fully OA and transitioning our hybrid OA portfolios, as well as through transformative agreements (TAs), which we helped pioneer. We significantly expanded the number of TAs in North America in 2023, and signed our first agreements in several countries and regions, including South Korea, South Africa and Greater China. We also renewed major TAs in Germany and the UK, which tells us that our customers view these types of agreements as providing good value.

To accelerate the next phase of the transition, we’re investing strongly in technology and AI, with a particular focus on making the research process and publishing easier for authors, whilst also ensuring we continue to protect the integrity and trust of research. We are also building our OA teams, especially in China and India, to reflect the growth in research outputs in these countries, and continue to work closely with institutions and funders globally to make the transition affordable, simple and scalable.

We remain committed to growing OA in a responsible, equitable way, and at a pace that ensures our authors and community feel supported, and allows us all to maintain the high standards and impact of our trusted brands.”