Springer Nature has signed its largest institutional OA book deal with the Max Planck Society through the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). The agreement covers all Springer Nature book imprints, across a broad range of disciplines, providing OA funding to affiliated authors from over 80 Max Planck Institutes. 

The initial three-year agreement, live as of 1st January 2022, will enable authors from all 86 Max Planck Institutes to receive a discount on the standard Book Publishing Charge (BPC) to publish their book OA. MPDL will contribute central funding toward the coverage of the discounted BPC, lowering the costs for authors even further. The discount and funding will be available across all of the publisher's book imprints, under a CC BY licence, ensuring their work is freely accessible and discoverable to all communities across science, technology, medicine, the humanities and social sciences. They will be available to readers around the world via Springer Nature's content platform SpringerLink. 

Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at the MPDL, commented:

“In establishing this new agreement with Springer Nature, we further advance one of our core missions - to support our authors in the dissemination of their research beyond the restrictions of paywalls. By covering a significant share of the open access book publication costs, we are enabling more of our authors to publish their work openly, increasing readership and impact, in particular for those disciplines where books play a crucial role in the scholarly communication process.”

Read the full announcement

Information for authors