Fees and funding
Publishing open access in the Discover Journal Series
All articles published in a Discover Journal are made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges or registration barriers.
Benefits of open access
Open access publication can lead to:
- Increased citation and usage
- Faster impact
- Compliance with open access mandates
Learn more about the benefits of open access.
Article processing charges (APC)
To publish open access in a Discover Journal, authors are required to pay an article processing charge. The APC for all published papers can be found on the ‘Fees and funding’ page of individual Discover journal websites.
Visit our open access support portal for further information about APC payment.
Open access funding
Visit Springer Nature’s open access funding & support services for information about research funders and institutions that provide funding for APCs.
Springer Nature offers agreements that enable institutions to cover open access publishing costs for Springer Nature's fully OA journals. Learn more about our fully open access agreements.
If the corresponding author's institution participates in our open access membership programme, some or all of the publication cost may be covered (more details available on the membership page). We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.
Creative Commons licences
Open access articles in Springer Nature journals are published under Creative Commons licences. These provide an industry-standard framework to support easy re-use of open access material. Under Creative Commons licences, authors retain copyright of their articles.
Discover Journal articles are published open access under a CC BY licence (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence). The CC BY licence is the most open licence available and considered the industry 'gold standard' for open access; it is also preferred by many funders. This licence allows readers to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to alter, transform, or build upon the material, including for commercial use, providing the original author is credited.
In instances where authors are not allowed to retain copyright to their own article (where the author is a US Government employee for example), please follow this guidance. More information on copyright policies can be found here.
Authors are advised to check their funder's requirements before selecting open access, to ensure compliance. Learn more about funder compliance.