Read and Publish Tab - Nature

The article must be submitted by the corresponding author.

This person must be employed or otherwise accredited by one of the participating institutions (University of Bern, PHBern, the Inselspital (University Hospital) or Universitären Psychiatrische Dienste Bern (UPD): students, PhD students, assistants, lecturers and professors.

Persons without an employment contract and with a Faculty Campus account (email address @faculty.unibe.ch) are not entitled to participate in the read-and-publish agreements.

Yes. According to the consortium's estimates, the article quota covers approximately 50-60% of the publication volume. Therefore, we have to assume that articles accepted for publication after the middle of the year can no longer be published in open access under this agreement.

As long as you can select the Open Access option under the agreement in the course of the "Author Journey" after acceptance for publication, the quota is not exhausted yet.

You can see whether your journal is part of the Read and Publish agreement in the title list.

This Read and Publish agreement with SpringerNature regards all hybrid Nature Research Journals (= journals that publish both open access and closed access articles).  This applies to all titles of the publisher that start with Nature except Nature Protocols, Nature Reviews, and all pure open access journals.

If you would like to publish in a pure open access journal, you can find information on alternative funding options on our Open Access page.

Information about the Read & Publish agreement with SpringerNature outside the Nature titles can be found in this FAQ at Springer.

1. You write an article type that is covered by the Read and Publish agreement (Original Paper, Analysis, Article, Letter, Brief Communication, Registered Report, Resource, Technical Report)
    
2. You are the corresponding author of the article.
    
3. You submit the article to a journal that is part of the Read and Publish agreement (list of eligible journals).
    
4. You use your e-mail address of the University of Bern, the Inselspital (University Hospital), the PHBern or the Universitären Psychiatrische Dienste Bern (UPD)in the author journey.
5. After the journal has accepted your article, you select in the author journey at Choose your affiliation your institution and if nothing fits correctly "University of Bern". This way SpringerNature automatically recognizes that your "Affiliation" is authorized to publish Open Access.
    
6. Select the Open Access option within the agreement.
   If you now decline the Open Access option, you cannot revise your decision. This means that you can no longer fund the Open Access publication via this Read and Publish agreement.

If this Open Access option does not appear in the author journey, either the journal or article type is not part of the Read and Publish agreement or the article quota for the current year has been exhausted.

No, there are article types that are not part of the Read and Publish agreement.

According to the agreement, only the following article types are considered for Open Access publication:

• Original Paper
• Analysis
• Article
• Letter
• Brief Communication
• Registered Report
• Resource
• Technical Report

The CC BY 4.0 license is mandatory.

You will find more information about Creative Commons licenses here.

Yes, the employment status at the time of submission of the article is crucial. The research for the article must have been carried out in whole or in part at the University of Bern.

In order to be assigned to the University of Bern, please select the appropriate affiliation after the article has been accepted by the publisher, even if you are no longer working there.

If you are no longer employed at the University of Bern at the time your article is accepted, we will contact you during the article check and ask you for proof that you were employed by us on the submission date.

The same applies accordingly to the PHBern, the Inselspital (University Hospital) and the Universitären Psychiatrische Dienste Bern (UPD).

The submission date does not matter. As long as the article has been accepted for publication by the Journal after January 1, 2023, and meets all the requirements of the Agreement, it can be published free of charge.

No, invoicing is handled by your institution.

The agreement covers only the Article Processing Charges (APC) for the open access publication of your article.

All other publication costs (e.g. color in print, posters, publication fees for overlength of an article) cannot be charged via the Read and Publish agreement.

According to SpringerNature this is not possible within this Read and Publish agreement.

If you decide to publish the article Open Access at a later date, you will have to find another source of funding, as this is no longer possible via Springer Compact.

It is not possible to fund open access publication in a hybrid journal through the Open Access Fund of the University of Bern.

If a publication request is rejected, you will be informed personally.

If you think this is a mistake, please reply as soon as possible with a statement why your article should still be published in OA.

If the decision to publish under OA is corrected after re-examination, you will receive a request from Springer Technical Support to complete the submission form again. This allows the process to continue as normal.