According to the agreement between Springer Nature and the Universities of The Netherlands (UNL), Dutch corresponding authors are allowed to publish up to 2,067 open access articles per year without additional article processing charges (APC).

The national annual quota of 2,067 publications has been reached. This means that the deal is suspended and UG/UMCG articles will no longer be eligible for the usual 100% discount on the open access fee.

Dutch corresponding authors will be able to use the new allocation of OA fee waivers as of 1 January 2024.

During the suspension of the deal authors can choose to publish closed access or open access, but in the latter case they will have to arrange the APC payment themselves.

Notify-me service on publisher deals quota
If you want to stay informed about the status of the Springer deal in the future, please sign up for the ‘notify-me service’ maintained by the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). The service will also notify you about similar situations with other publishers, should they arise.

Taverne amendment
As per UG and UMCG regulations, closed access articles will be made open access via Pure, but only six months after publication and without an open license. This is possible thanks to Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (also known as the Taverne amendment), which grants Dutch-affiliated researchers the right to make their short academic works open to the public for free after a short embargo period. Researchers don’t have to do anything themselves. The University of Groningen Library (UB) and the Central Medical Library (CMB) will take care of opening up all qualifying publications via Pure.

Should your research funder (e.g. NWO or Horizon Europe) require you to share your publications immediately (no embargo) and under an open license, please get in touch with us for advice.

If you wish to discuss the available options or if you have any questions email us at:
openaccess@umcg.nl