Springer Nature announces Asia-Pacific transformative agreement

Springer Nature has announced its first transformative agreement (TA) in the Asia-Pacific region. 

The agreement with the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) will give members of the CAUL consortium the ability to publish their research open access (OA) in more than 2,000 journals^[1], making it CAUL’s largest TA to date.

The framework has been agreed at consortium level with all 47 member universities across Australia and New Zealand plus seven external institutions participating. With the agreement seeing over 3,300 articles a year published full ‘gold’ OA it will increase the amount of Australian and New Zealand-funded research published by Springer Nature^[2] that is immediately available to all from the point of publication, thereby increasing its global reach and impact.

In addition, as part of the agreement researchers at these institutions will be able to read, use and reuse research published in over 2000 Springer Nature journals across the Springer, Palgrave Macmillan and Adis portfolios and in the Academic Journals on nature.com.

Carolyn Honour, chief commercial officer at Springer Nature, said: 'We are delighted that CAUL, following our long history of collaboration, has chosen to partner with us on this deal and are proud to be able to support Australia and New Zealand on their open access journey. We know from experience the truly transformational effect these agreements can have with our existing deals seeing entire countries' research output being ‘flipped’ from being subscription access to being immediately available to all. Not only is this final published version what researchers want to use, but when published full OA it provides authors with greater impact, use and reach for their research. It is great that more Australian and New Zealand authors will now be able to see these benefits and have their work more globally accessible.

'We hope other institutions and funders will work with CAUL and us on a wider agreement so that these benefits can be felt by all researchers in the region.  This is important because by “opening up” all outputs of research (data, code, protocols and methods, early versions of research via preprints, and of course the final published version of record via open access publishing), the prize waiting for us is a faster and more effective research system, delivering benefits like vaccines and solutions to global challenges for the whole world.'

Bob Gerrity, CAUL Board Director with oversight of the Content Procurement Service, said: 'The agreement with Springer Nature is a significant milestone in CAUL’s journey to providing greater open access. The uptake of this agreement by all Australian and New Zealand universities as well as many research and government libraries, shows the strong desire to make locally produced research openly accessible to a global audience. The breadth of titles across many Springer Nature imprints and subject areas will greatly increase the volume of articles published open access. Having the agreement meet many of CAUL’s 2022 Agreement Principles has made the decision to participate far easier for members and offers pathways to future sustainability.'