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Springer Nature, in agreement with the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL), has recently announced that German authors would be able to publish their primary research open access (OA) in Nature and the Nature research journals. While highly effective in transitioning articles to open access, transformative agreements like this can be complicated and take time to put in place. In recognition of this, Springer Nature has announced that authors seeking to publish OA in Nature and the Nature research journals will no longer have to wait.

From January 2021, all authors will be able to publish Gold OA when submitting to Nature and the 32 Nature primary research journals and will be afforded the same APC as MPDL, which is 9500 Euros. As such, these will be the first highly selective journals to offer their authors an immediate OA publishing option in this way. Researches published in Nature and the Nature research journals are downloaded by institutional users over 30 times more than papers in a typical journal. Dedicated in-house teams enhance the research articles widely, by achieving around 10,000 mentions in policy documents in 2020, generating over 100,000 news stories around the world and attracting over 3 million mentions on Twitter.

The new open access option is positive news also for Plan S funded authors as it means that Springer Nature is delivering on its commitment to enable gold OA publishing in all its owned journals by January 2021.

As a progressive publisher and an innovator in open access, Springer Nature will also roll out a new OA pilot from January 2021. The pilot initially covers six journals and offers authors the chance to publish in one of a number of Nature portfolio journals while only submitting once, hence reducing their time and uncertainty and increasing efficiency for all. Authors willing to opt-in to the pilot will pay an Editorial Assessment Charge and have their manuscript guided through the submission process by a Nature research editor who offers extensive feedback, including external peer review, in the form of an Editorial Assessment Report. If authors go on to publish in one of the participating journals then they will pay a top up fee, which for a Nature research journal would mean a reduced total APC of around 5000 Euros. Authors that opt out when they receive the Editorial Assessment Report or are not accepted for publication, can use their report to help them be published in another journal.

Authors will still be able to choose to publish their work via the existing traditional route, where authors can publish without paying an APC and their primary research is available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal. Articles that the Nature journalists and editors create and commission, such as highly valued News and Views articles that provide readers with an expert summary of scientific advances as reported in recently published papers, will continue to be available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal.

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