Springer Nature

Umeå University researchers can publish open access at no cost in Springer Nature journals. Read more about the terms of our agreement with the publisher for 2026 and what it means for you here.

This is included in the agreement

The open access publishing fee (APC, article processing charge) has been pre-paid through an agreement between the Library and the publisher. The agreement applies when the corresponding author (i.e., the person communicating with the publisher and journal) is affiliated with Umeå University.

The agreement does not cover additional charges, such as page fees or colour illustration fees.

The agreement applies to articles accepted by the publisher in 2025 or 2026 (“acceptance date” in 2025–2026).

For Nature and Nature Research journals, go to the Nature and Nature Research journals agreement.

Journals and article types

The agreement applies to open access publishing in all Springer Nature open access journals and the majority of their hybrid journals.

Article types covered by the agreement include ”original paper”, ”review paper”, ”brief communication” and ”continuing education”.

Choice of licence

Articles covered by the agreement are published with a CC BY licence.

Learn more about Creative Commons licences for researchers (Swedish National Library)

What you need to do

To use the agreement, you must:

be the corresponding author;
state a correct affiliation to Umeå University in the manuscript; and
state Umeå University as your primary affiliation in the publisher submission system.

For the publisher to identify you as affiliated to Umeå University, you should use your university email address ending in @umu.se.

Good to know about the publishing process

The submission process works best if you are connected to the University’s network (via internet on campus or VPN) when you submit your manuscript to a Springer journal. This will enable you to automatically be recognised as an Umeå University-affiliated author.

If you are not connected to the university network, select “I accept responsibility for paying the processing charge on this article”. The “membership” and “discount” options do not apply to the type of agreement that the Library has with Springer Nature.

When filling out the form to have the publication costs covered by the Library’s agreement, you do not need to enter a token code. Instead, click directly on “Next” to continue.

The actual verification of your affiliation to Umeå University will take place once your article has been accepted. Confirm your institutional affiliation on Springer’s publishing platform by selecting “Umea University” in the dropdown list.

Read more about the publishing process on the Springer Nature website:
Open access agreements for Sweden - information for authors