Springer Open Choice Now Free to UC Authors
The University of California Libraries have entered into a two-year trial with Springer Publishers to promote open access publishing. For the first time UC authors will not have to pay Springer’s open access article publication fees which will greatly increase open access to the over 1,500 articles published annually by UC faculty in Springer journals.
This trial agreement permits UC-affiliated authors whose manuscripts have been accepted for publication in most of the Springer journals the chance to be published using Springer Open Choice, which allows authors to retain the copyright to the article. By publishing with full open access, articles can be freely used for teaching purposes without the need for additional copyright permissions or royalties, placed in Open Access repositories, freely exchanged with colleagues outside of UC, and made available to policy makers and the general public without restrictions.
The UC-Springer agreement is the first open access experiment of its type undertaken on such a large scale with a major commercial publisher in North America. Many publishers, including Springer, charge per-article fees for open access privileges that can cost up to $3,000 per article. Thanks to the trial those fees for all UC authors are covered by the UCI Libraries and other campus libraries as part of our license with Springer for their publications.
The articles will be peer-reviewed, professionally indexed and produced, and available in both print and electronic formats. Authors will also have the possibility of incorporating additional non-text files such as sound or video in the electronic version. Published articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons license and, upon publication all articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Repository.
The UC-Springer agreement is the first open access experiment of its type undertaken on such a large scale with a major commercial publisher in North America. It applies to all Springer journals that are included in the Open Choice program, not just those that UC licenses. A title list for which Open Choice is currently not available is posted at: osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/alternatives/springer_ineligible.pdf
Additional information about this program is available on the UCI Libraries Scholarly Communication and Management Program website or by consulting your liaison librarian. This is just one of five discounted arrangements that the UC Libraries have made with publishers for the benefit of faculty and researchers, including BioMed Central, Oxford University Press, the National Academy of Science Press, an the Public Library of Science.
For more information, contact Julia Gelfand, Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian
(jgelfand@uci.edu or x44971).