Springer Nature has agreed to the largest Transformative Agreement in Japan with 10 institutions participating in an innovative pilot. This will see nearly 900 articles published OA in the coming year, marking a significant step forward to Open Science in the region.
This innovative agreement allows researchers from the signatory bodies to publish OA in over 2000 journals published by Springer Nature, and will increase the global visibility of Japan’s academic research; enable more researchers to publish their work OA, and benefit from the increased citations and downloads it provides; contribute to the improvement of research outputs and global presence of the participating universities; facilitate sustainable access to Springer Nature’s wide range of academic journals, and provide for a more equitable approach to OA amongst Japan’s universities.
Importantly, it will allow universities to transition at a speed suitable for their institution by offering the opportunity to fully or partially transform into OA. For example, it will initially see all papers from authors at the University of Tokyo and Tokyo Institute of Technology published Gold OA, meaning they will be immediately available for all to use and reuse from the point of publication. Additionally, a further eight academic institutions are committing to partially transition and will see over 50% of papers from their authors published fully OA.
Nine of the participating institutions are members of Japan's Research University Consortia (RUC) with the Tokyo University of Science participating following an agreement by the Executive Member of RUC. The participating universities will retain reading access to all existing journals to which they currently have access. Other RUC member universities are invited to join the agreement.
Click here to read the original press release.
