Copyright and licensing

Creative Commons with Open Access

All open access articles, books and book chapters published under the Springer imprint are published under Creative Commons licenses. Publishing an article or book/book chapter with open access leaves the copyright with the author. 

Authors can choose to publish their book or book chapter open access under our Springer imprints. Authors can also choose to publish their article open access in Springer’s Open Choice program, which includes Springer's hybrid and transformative journals or one of our SpringerOpen journals. 

Open access articles and book/book chapters* are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), which allows users to read, copy, distribute and make derivative works from the material, as long as the author of the original work is cited.

* Several other Creative Commons licenses are available on request for open access book and book chapters. 

For more information on open access policies related to publishing with Springer Nature, including CC licensing and retrospective open access; see our journals and books open access publication policies on SpringerNature.com.

Licence to Publish and Copyright Transfer for subscription articles and non-open access books/book chapters

Book and book chapters

Springer Nature authors retain copyright of their book or chapter manuscript. The majority of book and chapter authors will sign a broad exclusive Licence to Publish for their contributions. Further information on copyright and licensing can be found in our publishing policies. 

Journal articles

The vast majority of Springer Nature journals do not require authors to transfer the copyright of their published contributions. Authors grant Springer Nature, or the licensee an exclusive Licence to Publish, in return for which they can reuse their papers in their future printer work without first requiring permission from the publisher, or society of the journal. 

A small number of Springer's society-owned journals continue to transfer copyright. By signing the Copyright Transfer Statement authors still retain substantial rights, such as self-archiving.

For information on our self-archiving policies, please follow the links below:

• Self-archiving policies for journals
• Self-archiving policies for book and book chapters

US government or Crown employees:

If you are employed by the US government or a Crown body (including Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada and Australia), you will be able to indicate this in the rights process following acceptance and an appropriate non-exclusive licence will be sent to you to submit.