Springer Nature makes 500 textbooks available for free to support higher education

Springer Nature is making a range of "key" textbooks freely accessible for educators, students and academics affected by coronavirus lockdown to help support higher education institutions around the world.

Spanning all disciplines, the global programme will see institutions able to access more than 500 textbooks for free across Springer Nature’s e-book subject collections. These books will be available via SpringerLink until at least the end of July.

Already Springer Nature has made thousands of research articles on coronavirus freely available to accommodate the need for access to essential research and is providing guidance and support to librarians looking to give their staff and students remote access. The new initiative goes a step further, said Springer Nature.

Commenting, Niels Peter Thomas, managing director of Springer Nature Books, said: "As the global impact of the crisis intensifies, remote access to educational resources has become essential. We want to support lecturers, teachers and students during this challenging period and hope that this initiative, which will see over 500 key textbooks available for free online, will go some way to help."

The programme is in addition to the initiatives Macmillan International Higher Education, Springer Nature’s education division, is undertaking to support academics and students. For MIHE titles, academics can request e-book samples where they already have print editions and can have open access to its course management systems for the books they use. MIHE is also working with regional providers such as VitalSource, Kortext and RedShelf to ensure that in specific markets where students are separated from their print books, they have access to e-books to help them to continue to study remotely.

Other educational publishers offering up their resources similarly include Cambridge University Press, which has given access to 700 textbooks on Cambridge Core regardless of whether they were previously purchased until the end of May 2020.