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University and City Library of Cologne

Springer Nature: Projekt DEAL

As part of the Projekt Deal, the University of Cologne has signed a contract with Springer Nature based on the read-and-publish model.As part of the DEAL project, the University of Cologne signed an initial contract with Springer Nature based on the read-and-publish model, which ran from 2020 - 2023. In the meantime, the second DEAL contract has been signed with Springer Nature, which runs from 2024 - 2028.

As a scientist at the University of Cologne and the University Hospital of Cologne, you can publish in hybrid and gold open access journals from Springer. New from 2024 is the publication-specific billing of individual Open Access articles. Hybrid publications have a fixed price, which we will charge to your faculty. For publishing in pure Open Access journals, you will be granted a discount of 20% on the list prices of the Article Processing Charges (APCs). The USB subsidizes the publications of scientists (not clinicians) with € 700.00 per article.

In addition, you have free online access to almost the entire Springer Nature journal portfolio. Prerequisite: You access the journals from the university network.

 

Publishing in so-called Hybrid Open Access

Publications by eligible authors can currently be published Open Access in around 2,000 Springer subscription journals. Articles in the approximately 70 Springer Nature journals (see title list) are only published Open Access within the framework of DEAL if they

a) have not been solicited and actively edited and
b) are of the "Research Article" type.

The fee for an article is € 2,600.00 net plus € 100.00 service fee plus VAT.

The publication costs of the other faculties are covered by central funds in the university and research library. Before payment, we will ask you for third-party funds that should be used preferentially. The costs can be split between central and third-party funds.

Publishing in so-called Gold Open Access

If you would like to publish an article in one of around 600 pure Springer Nature Open Access journals, you will receive a 20 percent discount on the author fees due to your affiliation with the University of Cologne or University Hospital Cologne. This discount applies to BMC and Springer Open Access journals. The articles will be pre-financed by MPDL Services gGmbH (subsidiary of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science) during the course of the year and then invoiced periodically. Funding is provided by your chair or the faculty. Please contact the person responsible for your budget. The annual price increase for Open Access Gold APCs is limited to 3.5% per year and journal from 2020. Please apply for the DFG Open Access grant for your publication.

Scientific Reports and Nature Communications are excluded from the discount. Frontiers journals are not covered by DEAL.

 

Other publication fees

Further publication fees, which may be charged in addition to the Article Processing Charges (APCs), are not covered by Projekt DEAL and will be charged to you in full. These include charges for colour figures/author colour artwork, illustrations, photographs, line drawings, charges for insight/back covers and page charges for overlength.

 

Service fee

A service fee of € 100.00 net is payable for all items in the DEAL contract.

 

Full Reading Access

Almost the entire journal portfolio of Springer Nature with about 1,900 journals as well as archive rights to full texts (including Springer Medical, Palgrave, Adis and Macmillan Academic) are available to you on the University of Cologne's network. Use the UCL-Portal or the overview of the electronic journals of the University of Cologne by subject area to find the appropriate offer. Not included are the Nature journals, magazines (e.g. Scientific American, Spektrum der Wissenschaft) and technical journals (e.g. ATZ, MTZ).

 

Further information

Please note:

Please do not decide against the Open Access option.

Do you have any questions?