Open access at the Nature Portfolio

Nature and the Nature research journals – now with immediate gold open access options for all primary research

We are fully committed to open research and the benefits this brings for researchers, institutions, funders and the wider public. For authors who wish to publish their research open access, the Nature Portfolio offers open access options for all primary research.

What is open access (OA)?

Under the OA model, an article is made immediately available online when published, and is free to read for anyone in the world, rather than only to subscribing readers or institutions. The article is made available under a Creative Commons license, which allows for anyone to reuse or share the work according to the licence terms.

In our fully OA journals (such as Nature Communications and Scientific Reports), all articles are made OA on publication. In a hybrid or transformative Journal (including Nature and the Nature research journals), authors can choose between gold OA or subscription publication, based on their preferences, funder or institutional requirements for OA, and the availability of APC funding.

Payment for publication is typically made by the authors’ institutions or funding bodies, who pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) when the research is accepted. APCs vary from title to title, starting from €2,290 in Scientific Reports to €10,290 in Nature.

Why publish OA in the Nature Portfolio?

Open approaches accelerate the progress of science. 

  • OA is immediately accessible and highly discoverable: anyone, anywhere can read, reuse and build on your work.
  • Previous research shows the OA advantage for researchers: OA articles are cited on average 1.6 times more than non-OA articles, downloaded 4 times more often and attract 2.5 times more attention, as measured by news and policy mentions.1
  • Editorial rigour, with even greater reach: our OA options build on the foundations of our strong in-house editorial expertise. OA articles follow the same stringent standards. 
  • Funder compliance: many funders and institutions now require articles to be published OA as part of the conditions of funding. We are enabling OA options for all primary research to enable our authors to meet these requirements, this includes Plan S.

Options for OA at the Nature Portfolio 

At Springer Nature, we have been innovating in open research for two decades. At the Nature Portfolio that includes:

  • Launching Scientific Reports in 2011: home for all original research from across the natural and clinical sciences, engineering and psychology. Now the 5th most-cited journal in the world, it attracted over 734,000 citations in 2023 and receives widespread attention in policy documents and the media.
  • Through Nature Communications, creating the first Nature OA journal, publishing papers that significantly advance the natural sciences. Since becoming fully OA in 2014, it is the most cited multidisciplinary open science journal in the world.
  • Ensuring deposition of data and code alongside the research article to maximise transparency and reuse. Our active encouragement of data deposition has boosted data availability associated with published papers from around 50% to over 80% in some disciplines.
  • Encouraging authors to submit protocols to the Protocols Exchange  – an open sharing platform – providing valuable detailed reporting on the analytical and experimental design as well as statistical analyses.
  • Offering transparent peer review, publishing peer reviewer comments alongside the paper should the authors wish to do so. 
  • Developing new OA journals to support the growing need for rigorous OA journals, including the Nature Partner Journals in collaboration with preeminent scientists, and our Communications journal series.

Transformative Journals

From January 2021, authors submitting to Nature and the Nature research journals could begin choosing to publish their primary research using either the traditional publishing route or immediate gold OA with an APC of €10,290. These journals make an active commitment to open research, by increasing the number of articles we publish each year OA, with the eventual goal of becoming fully OA. A journal that commits to this process is known as a Transformative Journal (TJ). This will enable our authors to comply with funding requirements, including Plan S. Find out more about Transformative Journals

Nature and the Nature research journals are the first highly selective journals to offer their authors an immediate OA publishing option in this way. With more than 280 professional in-house Editors, more than 50,000 submissions each year, and an acceptance rate of less than 10%, the exceptional research in these journals has a profound effect on the disciplines to which it relates and the wider world. Research published in Nature and the Nature research journals is cited on average around 12 times more and downloaded by institutional users around 34 times more than papers in a typical journal. Find out more about the Nature research journals  

Dedicated support for authors from lower income countries

A dedicated fund has been made available to enable authors from many lower income countries (currently those classified by the World Bank as low-income (LIC) or lower-middle-income economies (LMICs)) to publish their primary research OA in Nature and the Nature research journals. 

It is a specific provision to support a subset of authors and only applies to our highly selective Nature Portfolio hybrid or transformative journals as they transition to OA and will be reviewed at the end of 2024. 

This applies to the following titles: Nature; Nature Aging; Nature Astronomy; Nature Biomedical Engineering; Nature Biotechnology; Nature Cancer; Nature Cardiovascular Research; Nature Catalysis; Nature Cell Biology; Nature Chemical Biology; Nature Chemistry; Nature Climate Change; Nature Computational Science; Nature Ecology & Evolution; Nature Electronics; Nature Energy; Nature Food; Nature Genetics; Nature Geoscience; Nature Human Behaviour; Nature Immunology; Nature Machine Intelligence; Nature Materials; Nature Medicine;  Nature Mental Health; Nature Metabolism; Nature Methods; Nature Microbiology; Nature Nanotechnology; Nature Neuroscience; Nature Photonics; Nature Physics; Nature Plants; Nature Structural & Molecular Biology; Nature Sustainability; Nature Synthesis and Nature Water; Nature Chemical Engineering and Nature Cities . 

*It does not cover Nature Communications and Scientific Reports. 

Please see our journal pricing FAQs for more details. As part of this initiative, authors will not need to ask to benefit from the support. Corresponding authors from qualifying countries whose primary research papers are accepted in principle (AIP) for publication in these titles will be informed as part of the publishing process that their paper will be published gold OA at no cost. Authors can opt out if they do not wish their papers to be published OA.

1 Within the first three years of publication. Springer Nature hybrid journal OA impact analysis, 2018.