Springer Nature and OASE sign deal to promote OA in Japan

Springer Nature and OASE (Open Access for Scholarly Empowerment) have signed a new transformative agreement (TA) with the goal of further promoting open access (OA) in Japan. This agreement will run from 2026 to 2028 and will enable universities and national research and development organisations, which have expressed an interest in participating in OASE’s TA framework, to have the option to fully or partially transform to publish OA. Currently, 83 institutions have signed up to participate from 2026.

It is expected that the agreement will enable researchers affiliated with the participating institutions in Japan to publish OA around 3,000 articles in over more than of Springer hybrid journals in 2026. In addition, access will also be provided to the Springer Journal Package (containing approximately 2,200 journals), as well as to journals from Palgrave Macmillan, Adis, and academic journals on nature.com that the institution has subscription to.

Representing OASE, Professor Noriko Ohsumi of Tohoku University said: “Established under Japan’s ‘National Policy on Promoting Open Access to Publicly Funded Scholarly Publications and Scientific Data’, OASE has been working to strengthen high-level commitment from university and research institute leadership to promote broader dissemination of research.

“Thanks to strong interest from a wide range of institutions, we engaged in constructive discussions with Springer Nature, building on the outcomes of the pilot transformative agreement launched in 2023. We recognize that there should be multiple pathways to advance OA. We hope this agreement will serve as a practical step toward more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable open publishing. We will continue to assess its impact and share insights and lessons learned with the community.”

Antoine Bocquet, Vice President Sales Japan, Southeast Asia and Oceania, and Managing Director of Springer Nature Japan, said: “We are pleased to reach an agreement with OASE to support Japan’s transition to open access, enabling researchers to fully realise the benefits of OA – including increased visibility, citations, and public engagement of their research. In 2024, more than 50% of our primary research was published OA, with TAs enabling 10 times more gold OA articles than those published outside of a TA. This latest agreement will replace and expand our already successful pilot TA with the Research University Consortium (RUC) and J-SPRINTA in Japan.”

“Latest data from our TAs in Japan shows that among institutions participating in the TA, the number of OA journal articles published in the first year of participation increased by approximately four times overall compared to the year prior to participation. In addition, on average, OA articles are downloaded over 4.4 times and their Altmetric attention scores are approximately 10.7 times higher compared to non-OA articles, according to our latest data.

“We are grateful that we were able to collaborate with OASE for sharing our goals in promoting open access, tailored to the needs of researchers in Japan. By making research achievements openly available, we believe we can collectively accelerate solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges.”