New Open Access agreement between DEAL consortium and Springer Nature

The 2nd DEAL contract with Springer Nature will increase the international visibility of research from Germany and offer scientific institutions open access publication opportunities and reading access to the publisher's content.

On 24 November 2023, MPDL Services gGmbH signed the second contract with Springer Nature on behalf of the DEAL consortium. The new five-year contract builds on the previous successes of the DEAL contracts and offers favourable conditions for open access publishing in Springer Nature journals as well as extensive reading access, ensuring participating institutions a seamless transition to the proven services for their scientists.

The DEAL consortium, represented by MPDL Services gGmbH, signed a new contract with the publisher Springer Nature on 24 November 2023. With a contract start date of 1 January 2024, the new agreement follows on seamlessly from the contract concluded in 2020, under which over 50,000 articles have now been published Open Access throughout Germany.

As called for by the German Council of Science and Humanities, this agreement also serves the goal of establishing open access as the standard for academic publishing and increasing the global visibility and reach of research at German academic institutions. 

The preamble to the agreement formulates a joint commitment to the transformation of hybrid journals into Gold Open Access.

It is an opt-in contract with a term from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028. 

The agreement covers all Springer Nature journals with the exception of Nature-branded journals, for which the Nature framework agreement of the Max Planck Digital Library still applies until the end of 2024. It was agreed with the publisher that negotiations on the integration of the Nature-branded journals into the DEAL contract will be conducted in 2024.