Open Choice: Your research. Your choice.

Choose optional open access in a Springer hybrid journal with Open Choice. Make your research more visible and accessible, immediately on publication. More than 1,900 Springer journals offer optional open access, with the majority of these titles now additionally accepted as Transformative Journals, actively committed to transitioning to fully open access. Find out more about Transformative Journals.

Benefits of publishing open access (OA)

• Increased engagement: OA enables access by anyone with an internet connection, immediately on publication. 
• Higher visibility and greater impact: In Springer hybrid journals, open access articles are accessed 4 times more often on average, and cited 1.6 more times on average.*
• Easy compliance with mandates: Many funders require open access, and some take compliance into account when assessing future grant applications.
• The copyright remains with you: Most open access articles are published under the liberal Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license.

_{* Within the first three years of publication. Springer Nature hybrid journal OA impact analysis, 2018.}

Discover your Open Choice options

• View a list of Open Choice journals (including which journals have Transformative Journal status), including article processing charges (APCs) by journal.
• Check your eligibility for the open access agreements we have in place with a number of institutions. Affiliated researchers can publish open access with their fees covered.
• Visit our open access funding page to find out how open access publication fees can be covered.
• View our open access policies page to learn more about OA licensing and copyright, manuscript deposition, and more.

Ordering Open Choice

Manuscript submission

When you’re ready, submit your manuscript to the eligible journal of your choice. 

Payment

If your open access publication fee is not covered by an agreement, we will issue you an invoice.

The open access publication fee does not replace any other existing journal publication costs, which are billed separately (e.g. surcharges for color figures in print, oversized articles, etc.).

Customers providing payment from the Americas will be charged in US$. Sales tax will be charged if applicable. Customers providing payment from Europe, Africa and Asia will be charged in EUR. VAT is not included in the price and will be added, at a standard rate, if applicable.

Support

If you have questions or need help with the Open Choice process, please contact the Springer Nature customer support team.

How can readers tell an article is Open Choice?

When searching for an article on SpringerLink, readers will find Open Choice articles clearly marked as open access. Springer Nature Open Choice articles are also published under Creative Commons licences.

What is the difference between Open Choice and Transformative Journals?

Transformative Journals (TJs) are similar to hybrid journals in offering optional open access to our authors, but TJs proactively support the OA transition. This means that TJs commit to annual growth of open access publication, provide metrics and comparisons for OA and subscription content, commit to providing greater transparency on the services covered by the APC, and proactively promote the benefits of OA to authors. Find out more here.