Springer announced at the Beijing International Book Fair that it has expanded its Open Access (OA) publishing program to include a full open access option for electronic books. This new service joins the Springer’s already existing SpringerOpen Journals, Biomed Central Journal Portfolio and Springer Open Choice programs.

The announcement reiterated, “Any electronic version of a SpringerOpen book is fully and immediately OA, and thus freely accessible on SpringerLink for anyone in the world with access to the internet”.

Licencing issues

SpringerOpen books are published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) License. This facilitates the open distribution and the free re-use and sharing of the work for non-commercial purposes, as long as the authors/editors are properly attributed.

Publicity and awareness

Book titles under this new service will be listed in the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), the discovery service for OA books which increases visibility of Springer’s OA books.

SpringerOpen books charges authors an Open Access fee at the beginning of the publication process. However authors who come from institutions which have a BioMedCentral or SpringerOpen Membership receive a discount.

For more information visit http://www.springeropen.com/books