The agreement that VSNU has concluded with Springer on behalf of Dutch universities, including the University of Amsterdam, applies to a maximum of 2,080 open access articles per year. The Open Access service of the University Library expects the limit to be reached in November. From then on the corresponding author will receive an invoice himself after choosing to publish open access.

How to avoid a high invoice?

If you can still publish open access free of charge with Springer, this is explicitly stated in the workflow: 'Yes: I will publish my article with open access and my institution covers the charge'. After the maximum is reached this message will disappear. From then on, you will have to pay for open access yourself, unless you choose for: 'No, I want to publish my article traditionally without open access'. More information including screenshots can be found on openaccess.nl.

Note that only when you have an agreement in place with your research department or faculty, the costs can be reimbursed afterwards. There is no central UvA fund for open access that can be used to claim the costs retrospectively.

Making an article freely accessible afterwards

If you have published an article with Springer in the traditional way, without open access, you can still make it freely accessible afterwards. There are several ways to do this. For more information, please visit the Library's webpage about Open access (sections 4 and 5).

And next year?

From 1 January 2021, the free open access publication of articles for UvA researchers at Springer will be available again.

Questions?

Send an e-mail to the Library via openaccess@uva.nl.