H/SS & Gov Info Services

Are you publishing in a Springer journal?
If so, you’re eligible for the Springer Open Choice program, which will make your scholarship more accessible by exposing your research to more readers.

• There are no charges for UC authors to participate in the Open Choice program.

• Costs are covered by the license between the UC Libraries and Springer. This ground-breaking agreement enables UC-authored articles accepted for publication in most of the 2000+ Springer journals to be published through Springer Open Choice, allowing full and immediate access to all readers. These articles will also be fully accessible through UC’s eScholarship publishing platform. UC authors do not pay the usual $3,000 fee to participate in the Springer open access program.

• The corresponding author does not have to be affiliated with UC to take advantage of this arrangement – any article is eligible as long as there is one UC author.

• You – or your corresponding or submitting author – only need to select the appropriate UC campus affiliation on the acceptance screen that appears as part of the normal publishing workflow. [Screen shots of acceptance screens are on the FAQ http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/alternatives/springer_faq.html

• The agreement, which was negotiated by the UC Libraries as part of its journal license, is a two year pilot and covers more than 2,000 journals in all of the subject areas in which Springer publishes.

• The open access arrangement covers journal articles only, not books or book chapters.

• UC authors retain the copyright to their articles under Springer Open Choice.

• The only requirement is that the authors agree to make the article available under the Springer Open Choice License.

• The Springer Open Choice program makes articles published in Springer journals available online once they have been through the peer review process and been accepted for publication. The final published articles, including all revisions resulting from peer review and copy-editing, are made available with full open access to all via the SpringerLink platform under a license compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. Open Choice articles can be used in course packs, course web pages, e-Reserves, and for other educational purposes, provided that the appropriate attribution is included. When perusing the Springer Open Choice website, UC authors should ignore the information pertaining to author fees.

• UC is interested in broad participation to gauge the usefulness of this open access pilot and to assess the level of interest on the part of UC authors in open access publishing options.  We invite UC authors to share information about the pilot widely among your colleagues.

• Articles will also be made available through UC eScholarship <http://repositories.cdlib.org/escholarship/>.

If you want more information, look at the FAQ and other information at <http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/alternatives/springer.html> or contact Assistant University Librarian for Technical Services, Mary Page (mpage@ucdavis.edu).  Campus liaisons also welcome your feedback on the arrangement.

The libraries will be conducting a more formal assessment later in the pilot. If you are willing to be contacted later on as part of that assessment please let Mary Page know.

Thank You

The University of California has entered a two-year pilot project wherein authors (faculty or staff) who publish in Springer journals will have their articles freely available via open access immediately upon publication.  Articles will be available from the Springer site and other repositories, as appropriate. 

 With this agreement, the UC’s will have access to approximately 1,700 Springer journals through the pilot project. The titles are listed here:   http://www.springerlink.com/journals/ 

Although the project is for two years,  the articles published within this pilot project will be open access forever. A  final verision of  UC authored, Springer published articles will also be deposited in UC’s eScholarship repository. 

Springer articles written by UC faculty or staff will begin appearing in eScholarship this fall.

 
The license model used in this agreement is the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license.   Virtually any legitimate use is permitted, as long as it is non-commercial.  Cost recovery (e.g., for course packs) is ok. 

 
Springer is not offering an opt-out option for faculty who may not want their work to be open access.  However, if an author contacts them with a specific opt-out request, they will honor it.

 
Many faculty are asking if similar agreements with other publishers are forthcoming.  We certainly hope so. Open access journals provide a sustainable publishing model, which can benefit authors, researchers, and the scholarly community at large.

 
For more information on UC Davis efforts in positively transforming scholarly communication, please visit:  Scholarly Communication at UC Davis Libraries

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The California Digital Library has posted an FAQ about the pilot project, and it includes lists of included and excluded journals.  http://osc.universityofcalifornia.edu/alternatives/springer_faq.html