– The fact that the large commercial publishers are opening up so that their flagship journals also allow open publishing is a further step forward for open accessibility, says Wilhelm Widmark, Library Director and Senior Advisor to the President with operational responsibility for Open Science at the university. 

Through the Bibsam Consortium, Stockholm University and nine other higher education institutions have now signed an agreement for the journals within the publishing label Nature Journals. The agreement means that researchers at Stockholm University can publish articles open access in 35 journals within the publishing label Nature Journals, including Nature, one of the world's most cited scientific journals.

Researchers at Stockholm University publish about eight articles a year in these journals.

Positive for the researchers – but not sustainable in the long run

– The articles in Nature are spread widely as they are monitored and reviewed by many news media, therefore it is of the utmost importance that these are also open access, says Wilhelm Widmark, and continues:

– In the future, however, the financial cost of this is not sustainable and we must work for transparent pricing models where we know what we are paying for.

Stockholm University already has read and publish agreements for Springer Nature's hybrid and fully open access journals, which means that researchers from Stockholm University can publish in over 2400 journals, at no cost to them.

Possible to publish open access in more hybrid journals 

New for 2022 is also that the agreement for Springer Nature's hybrid journals has been extended to also include the journals published under the publishing labels Palgrave Macmillan and Nature Academic Journals.

This means that researchers at Stockholm University can publish open access in a further 76 journals free of charge for them. 

Read more about open access on the Staff website

Search the library's search service SciFree, which lists journals for open publication and access