Jisc and Springer Nature extend open access commitment

Jisc and Springer Nature have extended the UK Compact agreement by including the prestigious Academic Journals (AJs) on nature.com – including some of the world’s most internationally renowned medical titles. 

The two parties say the extension of the transformative agreement demonstrates both Jisc and Springer Nature’s commitment to ensuring authors can publish their research open access (OA) from the point of publication, supporting wider accessibility whilst also managing the costs of access and open access (OA) publishing.

The combined  Springer and Academic Journals compact agreement will run until December 2022. Some 104 UK universities currently subscribe to the Compact agreement, with several new institutions joining the agreement this year. In the year 2020, 4,674 articles were accepted for OA publication. With new members and additional journals for both publishing and reading access, it is expected that publishing, participation and usage of UK funded research will continue to increase in 2021. 

The agreement will use the existing Compact workflows which are designed to provide a streamlined, efficient and funder compliant route to OA publishing.

Caren Milloy, director of licensing at Jisc, commented: ‘The extension and expansion of this agreement to include the AJs reflects the mutual commitment of UK universities and Springer Nature to open access and the successful embedding of centrally managed OA agreements. 

‘This contract will enable researchers to increase the number of articles they can publish OA whilst reducing exposure to additional spend, making UK research more accessible and more sustainable - which in these times is absolutely essential.’

Steven Inchcoombe, chief publishing and solutions officer at Springer Nature, added: ‘Partnerships and agreements such as this are key in being able to better support the drive towards and enable greater sustainable OA options for our research communities. 

‘The value of open research and its impact on society has never been more keenly needed or underscored. With the extension of this agreement to include all our other Academic Journals, we are confident that together with Jisc we will be able to support and enable real progress in advancing open science.’