DEAL contract with Springer Nature

LMU Munich, like many other universities, has joined the second German-wide DEAL agreement with Springer Nature. This agreement offers LMU members continued electronic access to most Springer Nature journals and new opportunities to publish research results via Open Access.

The new contract runs for five years (2024-2028).

Contents of the agreement

In detail, the contract with Springer Nature includes the following options for all LMU researchers and students:

Reading access

You will have electronic access to almost the entire Springer Nature journal portfolio (including Springer Medical, Palgrave Macmillan and Adis; approximately 2,000 hybrid journals).

At the end of the contract period, the journals will be available with permanent archiving rights from 2024 to 2028.

Not covered by the DEAL contract are:

journals with titles containing the term "Nature" ("Nature branded journals")
magazines (e.g. Scientific American, Spektrum der Wissenschaft)
specialist technical journals (e.g. ATZ, MTZ)

All journals are accessible via the EZB (Electronic Journals Library):

Link to the EZB with all Springer Nature DEAL journals

Having additional subscriptions, the University Library provides you with access to a number of Nature branded journals:

Link to the EZB with all Nature branded journal accessible at the LMU

Publishing

The prerequisites for hybrid and gold open access publishing are as follows:

The research must have been carried out predominantly at LMU.
The submission must be made to a valid LMU e-mail address.
The corresponding author is an active member of the LMU.
LMU is indicated as the main affiliation in the article

When stating your affiliation, please use the official name of the university: "Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München" (https://ror.org/05591te55) or LMU Klinikum (https://ror.org/02jet3w32) or Klinikum der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Of course, you can also use the name of the institute, clinic, centre, research group, etc.

For further information on naming the university, please see the letter from the President of the LMU:
Huber, Bernd (31. Juli 2023): Bezeichnung der LMU auf Publikationen (in German)

Hybrid Open Access

As of 1 January 2020, all LMU researchers will have the option, but not the obligation, to publish their research articles in Springer Nature subscription journals (so-called "hybrid journals") under a Creative Commons licence. The articles in most Springer Nature journals are made available under the CC-BY licence, a few also under CC-BY-NC.

If the corresponding author is a member of the LMU, the faculty or department of the corresponding author contributes to the costs. The faculties and departments decide independently on the extent to which they pass on the costs directly to the corresponding author.

Gold Open Access

There is also the option of publishing in one of Springer Nature's 600 Gold Open Access journals. Springer Nature offers all LMU members a 20% discount on publication fees for all Springer Open and BMC titles. There is no discount for Nature's Gold Open Access journals.

The costs for Gold Open Access publications are not covered centrally.

Invoices for publications in Gold Open Access journals are issued by the University Library after publication. If the funding conditions of the LMU Open Access Fund are met, the funding amount is automatically included in the invoice. Link to the complete and continuously updated list of Springer Nature journal.

Link to the complete and constantly updated list of Springer Nature journals

Significance of the agreement

This means that publications by members of the LMU will be available free to interested scholars worldwide. This will result in a considerable increase in the visibility of this research work, simplifying its re-use whilst continuing to respect the rights of the authors.

All articles published via the Project DEAL agreement with Springer will additionally be made available via the University Library's publications server and will thus remain permanently archived at the LMU

Contact partners at the University Library

For help on electronic publishing and open access:
Associated Electronic Publishing Divisions
Volker Schallehn: open-access@ub.uni-muenchen.de
Phone: 089 2180-2144

For help on the agreement, the journal licences and the accessibility of the journals:
Acquisitions and Cataloguing Department
Simon Xalter: konsortien@ub.uni-muenchen.de
Phone: 089 2180-3401