According to the agreement between Springer Nature and the VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands),  corresponding authors from Dutch universities are allowed to publish up to 2,080 open access articles per year without additional article processing charges (APC).

We expect to reach the national annual quota of 2,080 publications in October 2021. This means that the deal will be suspended and UG/UMCG articles will no longer be eligible for the usual 100% discount on the open access fee. In these cases the library will contact you in the course of the submission process.

Depending on the outcome of the new round of negotiations with Springer Nature, Dutch corresponding authors may be able to use the new allocation of OA fee waivers as of 1 January 2022.

During the suspension of the deal authors can choose to publish closed access or open access, but in the latter case they will have to arrange the APC payment themselves.

Taverne amendment

As per UG and UMCG regulations, closed access articles will be made open access via Pure, but only six months after publication and without an open license.

This is possible thanks to Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (also known as the Taverne amendment), which grants Dutch-affiliated researchers the right to make their short academic works open to the public for free after a short embargo period. Researchers don’t have to do anything themselves. The University of Groningen Library (UB) and the Central Medical Library (CMB) will take care of opening up all qualifying publications via Pure.

Funders' requirements

Should your research funder (e.g. NWO or Horizon Europe) require you to share your publications immediately (no embargo) and under an open license, please get in touch with us for advice.

If you wish to discuss the available options or if you have any questions email us at:

• openaccess rug.nl (UG authors)
• openaccess umcg.nl (UMCG authors)