As part of the SpringerNature negotiations, the Research and Impact Executive Committee has agreed that Nature Research hybrid Article Processing Charges (APCs) - which are excessively high, at £8290 - will not be paid from any funds managed by the University. This includes the Institutional Open Access Fund, British Heart Foundation, UKRI and Wellcome Trust open access block grants, as well as research group and departmental funds and grants. The journals this affects are listed at the end; it is a subset of SpringerNature journals. 

We’re doing this for a limited time while a new agreement is negotiated with SpringerNature. By restricting our spending in this way, we will send a message to SpringerNature that we are determined to get a deal which represents value for money; other research-intensive universities are taking similar steps. 

There is no restriction on publishing in these journals and authors will be able to make their work open access by depositing it in ORE, our open access repository. Details on funders’ policies can be found here

Authors acknowledging UKRI or Wellcome funding and submitting to Nature Research hybrid journals should comply with their funder open access policy by including the relevant licensing statement at submission and making the Author Accepted Manuscript available through ORE, our institutional repository/ Europe PMC (Wellcome) without an embargo and with a CC BY licence. Other funder’s requirements about funders’ policies can be found here

The decision applies to the following titles: Nature, Nature Aging, Nature Astronomy, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Cancer, Nature Cardiovascular Research, Nature Catalysis, Nature Cell Biology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Chemistry, Nature Climate Change, Nature Computational Science, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Electronics, Nature Energy, Nature Food, Nature Genetics, Nature Geoscience, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Immunology, Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, Nature Metabolism, Nature Methods, Nature Microbiology, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, Nature Plants, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Sustainability, Nature Synthesis 

If you have any questions or have already submitted an article to a Nature Research journal without including a licensing statement, please contact openaccess@exeter.ac.uk.