{"id":23180,"date":"2023-02-09T09:15:41","date_gmt":"2023-02-09T09:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/?p=23180"},"modified":"2023-08-17T12:22:46","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T11:22:46","slug":"university-of-kent-and-springer-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/isnews\/university-of-kent-and-springer-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Kent and Springer Nature"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cread and publish\u201d agreement between academic publisher Springer Nature and UK Universities was due for renewal by the end of 2022. Discussions were ongoing throughout the year but a new agreement was not reached by 31st<\/sup> December 2022. We are now in a grace period of access which has been extended to March 2023 while negotiations continue.<\/p>\n

What does this mean for Kent?<\/h1>\n

The University of Kent’s subscription to Springer Nature (SN) enabled the University to read Springer Nature journals and also publish open access articles with costs covered in more than 2,000 Springer hybrid journals. A new agreement must seek to encompass the whole Springer Nature Portfolio (Springer Compact, Nature journals, Palgrave journals), and their fully open access journals. This would allow continued read access to SN online and our authors to publish open access in SN journals at no extra cost.<\/p>\n

For Kent, the publishing aspect of the Springer agreement enabled a good volume of Kent research to be made available world-wide open access; it represented value for money and provided an easy process for our academics.\u00a0(In 2022, 41 Kent articles were made OA under the agreement costing Kent \u00a340,000. Outside of the agreement it would have cost \u00a390,000 to make each of these articles OA, so Kent saved \u00a350,000 by having this agreement in place). We also pay Springer for additional subscriptions to individual Nature titles in addition to the titles covered by the current agreement . This costs Kent an additional \u00a397,000. This means the current proposal would make Springer one of our most expensive suppliers and the APC charge to publish open access in Springer Nature Research journals is also one of the highest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Negotiating criteria<\/h1>\n

University of Kent supports Jisc\u2019s criteria<\/a>\u00a0for negotiations. A new agreement must:<\/p>\n