Springer Nature agrees first Transformative Agreements in Latin America and Canada

Springer Nature has agreed its first Transformative Agreements in Latin America and Canada, in a move that will “further pave the way for achievable and sustainable pathways to open research in the Americas”. 

Under a Transformative Agreement (TA), subscription access and Open Access (OA) publishing are brought together into one reading and publishing contract. This means researchers in participating institutions can publish under the “gold” OA model, while also gaining access to research in subscription journals. In addition to managing the cost and administration of OA, TAs offer authors an easy way to comply with funders’ OA requirements. 

The first TA in Canada is for members of the Federal Science Libraries Network (FSLN) and helps deliver on Canada’s Roadmap for Open Science to make federal scientific publications openly accessible by providing members with the ability to publish OA. The agreement starts in January 2022. 

The academic publisher said a further TA with Consorcio Colombia “marks a step in favour of global academic communication and the recognition of Colombian scientific capabilities in all areas of knowledge”. The agreement will start in July 2022.  

Both agreements provide the ability to publish OA in more than 2,000 of Springer Nature’s hybrid journals, including Springer, Palgrave and Adis portfolios. 

Carolyn Honour, chief operating officer at Springer Nature, said: “Transformative Agreements are a key driver in the sustainable transition to OA which in turn is an important precursor to open science. We remain focused on facilitating this transition for a growing number of institutions and federal agencies supporting academic collaboration, discoverability and usability at scale. With agreements in place in Canada, Latin America and the US, we have built sustainable models for others to follow, ensuring that open science can thrive in the Americas.” 

Springer Nature signed its first TA in 2014 with the Netherlands and now has 17 national agreements in place including the world’s largest by article volume with Projekt DEAL in Germany and the first national TA within Egypt of any publisher with government support.  

It said countries with these agreements in place with Springer Nature see between 70% and 90% of their authors publishing OA.