Springer Nature and VSNU renew agreement on open access publishing

Springer Nature and the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) have renewed their agreement to secure open access publishing for Dutch universities up to 2021.

VSNU and Springer Nature together were the first to sign a hybrid open access agreement of this type in 2014. The original agreement, combining subscription and open access publishing rights into one contract, also signalled a commitment to rapidly moving towards open access publishing for all publicly funded research results from the Netherlands.

Since then, the proportion of Dutch articles published open access in Springer Nature journals has risen from 34% in 2014 to 84% in 2017.