Swedish researchers to benefit from innovative open access agreement with Springer

National Library of Sweden signs Springer Compact deal on behalf of Swedish library consortium

Heidelberg | London, 7 July 2016

Springer and the Swedish library consortium for universities and research institutes (Bibsam) have finalized a broad agreement for Springer Compact running through December 2018. Springer Compact is a transitional deal combining reading access and open access publishing in one payment scheme. Specifically, participating consortium members’ researchers gain access to over 2,000 Springer journals and also the right to publish their research via the open access model in more than 1,650 Springer hybrid journals. Publishing articles open access helps current findings reach a larger audience, benefiting not only science but the society at large.

Bibsam is the first Scandinavian library consortium to start using Springer Compact as a means to enable researchers from over 30 member institutes, including all major universities like Gothenburg, Lund, Stockholm, Uppsala and the Karolinska Institute, to publish their research open access.

“With this agreement we intend to accelerate the transformation of the scholarly publishing systems to open access,” says Wilhelm Widmark, Chair of the Bibsam Consortium Steering Committee and Library Director at Stockholm University. “A pilot in nature, its aim is to gain experience to help prepare a framework for more reasonable models of open access publishing. The substantial support from the Swedish Research Council has made it possible.”

Over the lifetime of the deal, Bibsam and Springer will monitor and evaluate the arrangement to ensure that it continues to meet the Swedish higher education institutions’ needs and funders’ requirements as the open access environment evolves.

“This is a step in the right direction to speed up the transition to open access,” adds Gunilla Herdenberg, National Librarian at the Swedish National Library. “It presents a good example of what can be achieved for scholars as well as for the broader public when research institutions, libraries, and a research funder work effectively together.”

Springer has already signed similar agreements with the Max Planck Society in Germany, the Association of Dutch Universities (VSNU), the Austrian Academic Library Consortium, and Jisc in the UK.

“During the last year and a half, Springer Nature has built a reliable infrastructure that reduces the administrative burden of open access publishing both for authors and their institutions,” says Juliane Ritt, Executive Vice President Global Hybrid OA Initiatives at Springer Nature. “I am extremely pleased that Swedish researchers can now take full advantage of these efficient processes. Springer Compact will enable their articles to be published open access in any of our 1,650 hybrid journals without worrying about OA mandate requirements or fees. With this large-scale agreement, Springer Nature significantly supports Sweden’s path to open access publishing.”

The National Library of Sweden negotiates license agreements for electronic information resources on behalf of Swedish universities and research institutes with a turnover of approximately 35 million EUR (2016). The main objective of the Bibsam Consortium is to provide both financial and administrative savings for participating institutions and favourable terms of usage. Visit www.kb.se/bibliotek/centrala-avtal/Bibsam-Consortium/

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