8 May 2019
Springer Nature is seeking views on a new approach to research publishing aimed at accelerating the transition to open access.
In a blog published recently, Springer Nature sets out a new approach to research publishing with the goal of increasing the demand from authors to publish their research OA and increasing the supply of journals able to publish open access, potentially enabling selective journals such as Nature to transition to OA.
The new approach would see publishers move from being passive enablers of open access to being active drivers of the transition to OA, with this demonstration of commitment increasing institutions' and funding bodies' confidence and support. Views are being sought on the proposed new publishing standard – Transformative Publishing – which encompasses two main elements:
- Transformative read and publish deals: transformative publishers would commit to offer them where institutions, consortia or research funding bodies wish to use them and to scale them when in place.
- Transformative journals: publishers would commit to adapt the hybrid and subscription journals that they own so that, by complying with the required standard and set of requirements, these journals would be 100% OA for primary research articles at the end of the transition. These requirements include:
- promoting the benefits of OA to authors prior to submission, at submission and during the peer review process to allow for comparisons to be made
- operating a more transparent APC pricing policy that explains the value and cost rationale of each APC pricing band to customers
- reporting on the OA and subscription content volumes and usage of its transformative journals portfolio so that institutional librarians can evaluate the cost per article and the article cost per download of their subscription content
Ultimately, transformative publishers would move to being at the forefront of measuring, reporting on, and promoting the benefits of OA and be required to commit to continuously increase the average level of OA take-up across their journal portfolios.
Commenting, Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer at Springer Nature, said, “Our proposal for a new Transformative Publishing standard is radical in that it encourages a significant shift in publishers’ view of their role in the transition to OA. It turns what to date has generally been a passive approach from publishers to offering OA into an active one where the benefits of OA are promoted to authors at every step of their journey.
“Springer Nature will do all it can to progress the move to OA and is prepared to adopt the approach described here but that is not enough. A similar approach needs to be adopted much more widely to have maximum impact. That means researchers, institutions and funding agencies need to determine if this proposal meets their needs and other research publishers need to determine if they would adopt a comparable approach. Where it falls short, we encourage the wider community to suggest improvements. Please visit our blog to read about it in more detail and our LinkedIn page to share your views.”