Springer Nature signs joint letter with 50+ other publishers
Signatories publish statement on Rights Retention Strategy
London | 03 February 2021
Each of the undersigned publishers and societies have long been committed to Open Research and the broadening of Open Access options for researchers. They offer a wide variety of paths to Open Access, including Open Access journals, hybrid journal options, article self-archiving, and transformative (including Read & Publish) deals. The signatories to this statement are innovating and experimenting with flexible and sustainable mechanisms for authors to make their works as widely available as possible, whilst maintaining the highest standards of quality and integrity, discoverability and usability.
As of January 2021, a group of private funding agencies and European governmental funding agencies called “cOAlition S” has begun implementing a set of principles designed to ensure that all scholarly publications resulting from their funding are published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.
The undersigned share with cOAlition S the goal to expand Open Research and are committed to supporting cOAlition S-funded researchers through the various paths provided for Open Access. However, we are unable to support one route to compliance offered by Plan S, the “Rights Retention Strategy”, in its current form. The Rights Retention Strategy provides a challenge to the vital income that is necessary to fund the resources, time, and effort to provide not only the many checks, corrections, and editorial inputs required but also the management and support of a rigorous peer review process, a process that is of fundamental value and is essential to the verification of results.
The Rights Retention Strategy ignores long-standing academic freedoms and will work against the shared objective of a more open and equitable scholarly ecosystem. It provides an immediate free substitute that eliminates the ability to charge for the services that publishers provide, whether via subscriptions or Article Publishing Charges. As such, the Rights Retention Strategy is not financially sustainable and undermines potential support for open access journals. Additionally, it will undermine the integrity of the Version of Record, which is the foundation of the scientific record, and its associated codified mechanisms for corrections, retractions and data disclosure.
While many publishers, including some of the undersigned, are able to provide options that allow authors to post versions of articles to repositories with broad reuse license, to be sustainable this is a decision that needs to be applied at the level of individual journals, not through blanket policies. The signatory publishers therefore oppose the approach of the Rights Retention Strategy in its current form and urge authors to consult with their journals of choice as to what is allowed.
The undersigned publishers pledge to do everything possible to support the research community and the right to communicate research results in the venue that each researcher will find most relevant for their work. Our commitment to broadening Open Access is a sincere one, but it must ensure that the vital process of verification and trust in science is maintained to a high standard.
Signed:
Academy of Dental Materials
Acoustical Society of America
AIP Publishing
American Academy of Ophthalmology
American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus (AAPOS)
American Chemical Society
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
American Medical Association (AMA)
American Physical Society
American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP)
American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO)
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Society of Hematology (ASH)
American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM)
American Association of Physics Teachers
AVS – The Society for Science and Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing
Brill
British Journal of Anaesthesia
Budrich Academic Press
Cambridge Media
Cambridge University Press
Canadian Cardiovascular Society (CCS)
China University of Geosciences Beijing, China
De Gruyter
Elsevier
Emerald
Erich Schmidt Verlag
French Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SFBBM)
Frommann-Holzboog Verlag
Future Science Group
Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Hogrefe
International Association for Gondwana Research
IOP Publishing
Journal of Nursing Regulation
Julius Klinkhardt KG
La Découverte
Laser Institute America (LIA)
OSA – The Optical Society
Pearson Benelux
SAGE Publishing
Society of Rheology
Springer Nature
Taylor and Francis
The Geological Society of America
Uitgeverij Verloren
Vittorio Klostermann
wbv Media
Wiley
Wolters Kluwer
Susie Winter | Springer Nature | Director of External Communications
susie.winter@springernature.com
