Expansion of open access publication opportunities with Springer Nature, ACS, APS, ACM, IOP & John Benjamins

In accordance with the Open Science Policy of the University of Freiburg, the University Library promotes open access publications in a variety of ways and thus supports free and unhindered access to scholarly research. Through the library's participation in various framework agreements, members of the university who act as corresponding authors have the opportunity to publish articles in open access free of charge or at a discount.

The University of Freiburg's participation in a Germany-wide Publish and Read Framework Agreement with the publisher Springer Nature for the portfolio of Nature journals will make publishing easier for Freiburg researchers. The fees incurred (Article Processing Charges, APCs) for open access research articles in Nature and the 38 hybrid Nature research journals will be billed centrally via the University Library during the contract period from 2025-2028. The usual individual invoicing of authors will no longer apply. In addition to the extension of publication rights, reading rights will also be extended: All Nature journals published during the contract period will be fully available for reading access.

With effect from 01.01.2025, further Publish and Read agreements were concluded for the American Chemical Society (ACS), the American Physical Society (APS), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Physics (IOP) and for the John Benjamins Journals, which are accompanied by extensive publication rights. Detailed descriptions of the publication rights can be found on the University Library's open access website. However, the open access membership for PLOS journals, which ran from 2023-2024, has expired.

If you have any questions about open access publishing or the University of Freiburg’s Publication Fund, please contact us at openaccess@ub.uni-freiburg.de.