STM publisher Springer, Germany, plans to expand its open access (OA) programme by offering a fully OA option for books. This is expected to extend the company's SpringerOpen and BioMed Central journal portfolio, and its Springer Open Choice option. Any electronic version of a SpringerOpen book is fully and immediately OA, and thus freely accessible on SpringerLink for anyone in the world with access to the Internet.
SpringerOpen books are seen to give authors and editors in all areas of science the opportunity to publish OA with the same standards they are used to at Springer. The copyright for the entire OA book including every chapter remains with the editor/author.
SpringerOpen books are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) licence. This facilitates the open distribution and the free re-use and sharing of the work for non-commercial purposes, as long as the authors/editors are properly attributed. SpringerOpen Book titles will be listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), the discovery service for OA books which increases visibility and findability of Springer's OA books.
