New national open access agreement with Springer Nature
swissuniversities has concluded a new national open access agreement with Springer Nature on behalf of the Swiss higher education institutions, and the University of Basel is taking part. The agreement replaces the previous one from 2023 and significantly improves the conditions for publishing and reading.
For researchers at the University of Basel this means:
- Full read access to the Springer and Nature journal portfolios.
- The option to publish open access across the entire Springer Nature portfolio (over 3’000 journals), without receiving an invoice from the publisher.
- Automatic conversion to open access of articles already published in Springer and Nature hybrid journals since January 2026, at no cost to the authors.
- Favourable terms for the use of articles with AI tools in research and teaching.
One thing changes behind the scenes: publication fees (Article Processing Charges, APCs) for Gold Open Access articles are now handled centrally by the University Library rather than billed to individual researchers or departments. In most cases there is nothing you need to do differently; where a contribution to costs is required, the University Library will contact you directly.
Full details on the agreement are available in the swissuniversities media release.
For what the agreement means in practice at the University of Basel, see our dedicated information page. All researchers will also receive an email with the most important points.
For questions, please contact: openaccess@clutterunibas.ch.