DEAL Consortium and Springer Nature renew successful OA agreement for Germany

Following news last month of both parties' intention to reach an agreement, the German DEAL Consortium and Springer Nature have announced the signing of a new Open Access (OA) agreement that will boost international reach and impact for Germany-based researchers and provide academic institutions in Germany with open access publication options and reading access to content.

Under the agreement the publisher says:

• researchers from participating institutions will continue be able to publish OA in Springer Nature’s OA and hybrid Springer, Palgrave, and Adis journals as well as in its fully OA Nature titles and BioMedCentral journals,
• participating institutions will continue to benefit from attractive terms when their researchers publish Open Access (OA),
• researchers at participating institutions retain reading access to articles across the Springer, Palgrave and Adis portfolios.

Signed on 24 November by Springer Nature and MPDL Services GmbH as the DEAL operating Entity, the agreement runs from 2024 through 2028. It does not include the hybrid Nature branded journals. The parties intend to continue discussion on these titles in 2024 following the end of the existing Framework Agreement with MPDL, added the publisher.

The publisher continued, the preceding agreement between DEAL and Springer Nature from 2020 has played a significant role in advancing the transition to Open Access in Germany without driving up cost. Since then, the number of published OA articles in Springer Nature journals has increased to more than 50.000. It also significantly improved accessibility of Springer Nature journal content, as article usage within Germany rose by more than 50 percent across the portfolio over the contracted period.

Gerard Meijer, director of the Max Planck Society’s Fritz Haber Institute who negotiated on behalf of DEAL, said: “This agreement is a success for science. It strengthens the shift in scientific publishing towards open access as a standard and offers a longer-term and sustainable perspective. I am particularly delighted that the agreement takes the aspect of data protection into account in line with the expectations of the scientific community.”

Dagmar Laging, VP institutional sales Europe for Springer Nature said: “DEAL has really boosted the visibility of German research in the world, while securing broad access to high-quality journal content. That is why we are very pleased that we have come to an agreement that will bring us even closer to open science in Germany while offering good value to participating institutions.”