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More than 99 percent of German universities and higher learning institutions have joined the renewed DEAL agreement with Springer Nature

Successful first iteration of transformative agreement DEAL delivered high visibility for German science internationally as well as improved access to global research

Berlin | London  | New York, 07 May 2024

Only a few months after it was signed, almost all German universities and higher education institutions have joined the renewed open access (OA)  agreement between the DEAL consortium and Springer Nature.

The more than 99 percent participation rate reflects the significant benefits which the previous agreement has delivered for institutions and researchers. Between 2018 and 2022:

  • The amount of freely immediately accessible publications by researchers in Germany has more than quadrupled to 15,000 per year.
  • The global download figures for such articles increased by more than five-fold to an average of almost 1,300 per article.
  • The number of downloads of subscription content by DEAL participants rose by 53 percent to 18.8 million.


DEAL has thus not only significantly increased the global visibility of research coming out of Germany; it has also improved access to high-quality scientific works from around the world within the country.

The new agreement signed last November enables researchers from participating institutions to publish content in the OA and hybrid Springer, Palgrave and Adis journals as well as in the OA  titles of Nature Portfolio and the BMC journals at attractive conditions. They also receive reading access to subscription articles from the entire Springer, Palgrave and Adis portfolio.

Dagmar Laging, VP Institutional Sales Europe at Springer Nature, said: "We are very pleased about the great interest shown by German institutions in working with us under the new DEAL agreement. Thanks to open access, research from Germany will become more visible worldwide and, in addition, institutions in Germany get access to high-quality scientific subscription content."

Springer Nature has been a pioneer in Open Science for decades. The publishing group promotes the publication of research data, incremental findings, and negative results to make research more replicable and reproducible. Furthermore, Springer Nature aims to continuously increase the proportion of articles that are immediately and freely accessible.

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