12 October 2026

The open access agreement with the publisher Springer Nature is based on a maximum number of articles per year. The yearly cap for open access articles published at Springer Nature has been reached per 14 October 2026. This may affect the open access publication of your article at Springer Nature.

Researchers whose articles are accepted between now and 31 December 2026 will be invoiced by the publisher for open access fees if they choose to publish still this year in open access with the publisher. Make sure to avoid any unexpected charges.

What to do if your article gets accepted now?

If your article is accepted for publication in a hybrid journal by Springer Nature after the cap has been reached, you can still choose to publish your article in open access in 2026 if you have funds to cover the open access fee. You could try to pay the publication fees through, for instance, your research grant or via your institute. The University and the LUMC do not have a central budget to cover these publication fees.

Alternatively, you could choose to not publish in open access at Springer Nature and instead make the published version of the article openly available in the Leiden repository Scholarly Publications six months after publication. This is permitted under article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act (the ‘Taverne’ Amendment).

You are also encouraged to make versions of the article open access by posting a preprint or a postprint/Author Accepted Manuscript in the Leiden repository Scholarly Publications or on a platform suitable for your research.

For more options, please see the page on Caps in open access.

We strongly recommend all authors whose manuscript is accepted by Springer Nature after date the cap is reached to contact the University Library’s open access team via openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl to help you navigate the options available.

Maximum for open access publications other publishers

Some agreements with other publishers have a comparable maximum number of articles they cover. The webpage 'Caps in open access' contains more information on these 'caps', the expected dates they will be reached and which alternatives are available.

Questions?

For any questions about publishing in open access, please check information about open access on our website or contact the University Library’s open access team via openaccess@library.leidenuniv.nl.