To enable researchers to publish their research open access (OA), Springer Nature says it has expanded its transformative agreements (TA) in Japan from 10 universities in 2023 to a total of 60 institutions in 2025. Through the TAs, researchers affiliated with any of the participating institutions in Japan, can publish OA without restriction in over 2000 hybrid journals published by Springer Nature. As part of the agreements, researchers of the participating institutions also have access to research published in Springer Nature journals across the Springer, Palgrave Macmillan and Adis portfolios and in the Academic Journals on nature.com, added the publisher.
Springer Nature says it currently operates two types of TAs in Japan: (1) Japan Pilot Transformative Agreement with the Research Universities Consortium (RUC); and (2) Japan Springer Research Institute Transformative Agreement (J-SPRINTA) for non-RUC institutions.
Springer Nature says key highlights of the TAs in Japan for 2025 are as follows:
- Twenty-two new TAs with Springer Nature will start in January 2025. This consists of three institutions starting the Japan pilot TA and 19 institutions starting J-SPRINTA, including three governmental institutions, the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences, National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES), as well as 1 hospital, the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology (NCGG).
- Since its launch in 2023, a total of 60 institutions in Japan have upgraded their subscriptions to a TA with Springer Nature. This consists of 24 pilot TA institutions and 36 J-SPRINTA institutions.
- The TAs will see over 2400 articles published OA in 2025, which is more than 2.5 times the volume of OA articles compared to 2023.
Antoine Bocquet, vice president sales Japan, Southeast Asia and Oceania and managing director of Springer Nature Japan said: “I am pleased that Springer Nature has further expanded the agreement with Japanese institutions, including governmental institutions and a hospital for the first time. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all the institutions who are part of these TAs, especially those who started in 2025. Since the launch of the TAs, in three years, the number of institutions participating in our TAs has expanded six times, with over 2.5 times increase in the volume of OA articles to be published. We have been working with our partners in Japan to establish a flexible framework to enable institutions to find the right TA model that meets the needs of their researchers”
“Our data from our TAs in Japan shows that on average, OA articles are downloaded about 5-6 times higher compared to non-OA articles. We are also expecting more OA articles in research fields, which previously saw relatively lower OA uptake, such as physical sciences and humanities and social sciences (HSS). It is great to see researchers benefit from the increased visibility of their work through OA publishing. The increased accessibility of research enables the research to reach a broader audience, including the general public, allowing them to use, distribute and build upon research published OA. We look forward to continuing to work with the Japanese community to further promote open science in Japan.”
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