The agreement expired on June 2025. A new agreement is under negotiation: waiting for the renewal, it is now possible to publish Open Access with the coverage of the new agreement.

The new agreement will be transformative and will cover both the subscription fees for accessing the collection including all Springer, ADIS and Palgrave journals, and the Nature Academic journals collection, as well as the fees for publishing Open Access in the hybrid journals included in the same collections and in hybrid journals that will be converted to Open Access. Therefore, authors can publish Open Access at no additional costs.

 

SUMMARY SHEET FOR PUBLICATION

Requirements for covering publishing costs: elegibility of the corresponding author (see the dedicated FAQ), journal and article type.

List of the eligible journals: 2025 list [.xlsx 102 KB] (see the dedicated FAQ).

Types of eligible articles: Original Papers (Original Researches, Original Articles, Original Papers or Research Papers) and Review Papers.

Available fund: annual limited national fund.

Licence: CC BY. 

 

 

FURTHER INFORMATION

Which authors may be eligible?

Only corresponding authors already affiliated with the University of Bologna on the date the article is accepted are eligible, including academics with fixed-term contracts such as PhD students, research fellows, fixed-term assistant professors, specialisation school students, etc.

Authors must submit their contributions via their institutional email address (i.e.: name.surname@unibo.it or name.surname@studio.unibo.it).

Which are the eligible journals?

The hybrid journals of the collection including all Springer, ADIS and Palgrave journals, accessible via the SpringerLink platform, the hybrid journals included in the Nature Academic journals collection, accessible via Nature.com, as well as the hybrid journals that will turn full Open Access.

Journals that were already full Open Access when the agreement was signed are not included; in this case, the publishing costs are charged to the authors.

Here is a comprehensive 2025 list [.xlsx 102 KB].

What happens if the annual national fund is exhausted?

The agreement covers the open access publication of a limited number of articles.

In case the annual fund is exhausted, the publisher inhibits on its platform the possibility of requesting the coverage of the open access publishing costs through the transformative agreement, no longer showing the University of Bologna in the list of institutions that have an agreement of this type. Authors can publish their articles under restricted access (without paying any fee) or in Open Access (bearing their own costs).

Under which kind of licence will articles be published?

The standard licence is CC BY. 

Authors retain all rights relating to their articles, which may be deposited in the University of Bologna institutional repository (IRIS) and published on the authors’ personal websites. Open access is granted right after the publication without any embargo period.

When will the article be published Open Access?

The article will be published once the University of Bologna has verified the author's affiliation with the University and has given its approval.

Which costs are excluded from the coverage of the agreement?

Any other publication fees (i.e.: submission fees, color pages, overlength pages fees etc.) are not covered by the agreement.

Where can I find more information about the agreement?