Are you affiliated with a German university or research institution (public or private), federal institute, government agency or other scientific institution? Are you the corresponding author of your publication? Then take advantage of the opportunity to publish Open Access in Springer Nature or Wiley journals!

Please note:

• The DEAL Open Access Option is open to all researchers affiliated to one of the more than 1,000 DEAL institutions. It is not necessary for your institution to have formally signed up for the agreements. (The list of DEAL institutions covered by the agreements differs slightly between publishers: see Wiley, Springer Nature).

• If you are unsure whether your employment status entitles you to use the DEAL agreement (e.g. as an emeritus professor), please check with the head of your institution or library.

In the publishers' submission systems and publication processes, authors who are eligible to publish OA under the DEAL agreements are identified on the basis of various parameters after their article has been accepted and then validated by the DEAL institution (usually by library staff). In order to streamline the process of identifying and validating DEAL-eligible publications, please note the following information:

• Please indicate the DEAL institution as the primary affiliation of the corresponding authors. Please specify the DEAL institution to which the publication - and thus the publication fee - should be attributed as the primary affiliation of the corresponding author, both in the publishing systems during submission and in the publication workflow after acceptance of the article and in the publication itself.

• Are you a corresponding author affiliated with more than one institution, or did you recently change your institution? In this case, select as your primary affiliation the institution where the main part of the research for the submitted article was carried out.

• Use your institutional e-mail address. Please provide your institutional email address throughout the publication process whenever possible.

• Select the Open Access option for hybrid journals. For both OA and hybrid journals, once the article has been accepted for publication, you will need to select and confirm the primary affiliation to which the article will be assigned in the publication workflow (see above). If you have submitted to a hybrid journal, you will be asked to select Open Access in the publication workflow once your article has been accepted for publication. Then confirm the Open Access option offered by the publisher (Wiley = "Hybrid Open Access"; Springer Nature = "Open Choice").

• Confirm the Creative Commons licence. Once you have chosen Open Access, you will be asked to confirm the Creative Commons Attribution License (usually CC-BY) for your article. While authors have traditionally transferred all rights to their work to publishers, the CC-BY licence allows Open Access authors to retain the right to reuse their own work and to distribute their published articles freely and legally, so that scholars worldwide can read and build on your work, as long as they cite you. (See Why should I opt for the open CC-BY license?)

DEAL covers the cost of open access publishing in thousands of subscription-based, peer-reviewed journals across all disciplines. Additionally, special DEAL savings are applied on the article processing charges (APCs) of scores of fully open access journals. You can find lists of the subscription-based and fully open access journals comprised in the DEAL agreements here:

• Wiley

• Springer Nature

  • Nature-branded subscription journals are not included in the DEAL agreement, but German institutions can participate in the separate, framework agreementcovering open access publishing for their authors. Please get in touch with your open access officer or librarian to learn whether your institution participates.

The DEAL agreements cover open access publishing of original research articles and reviews. Some additional articles types are covered in Springer Nature journals. The exact article types covered under each agreement are:

Wiley

• Primary Research Articles

• Review Articles

Springer Nature

• Original Papers

• Review Papers

• Brief Communications

• Editorial Notes

• Book Reviews

• Letters

• Reports

Note on Springer Nature medical journals (Facharztzeitschriften): Articles in these journals will only be published Open Access under DEAL if they are a) not submitted by invitation (e.g. via a call for papers) and b) of the type "research article". Non-research articles in journals are excluded from the agreement (see list of Springer Nature journals).

The Alliance of German Science Organizations (as well as cOAlition S) encourages authors to choose, wherever possible, the open license CC-BY for their published works.

The CC-BY license fruits the greatest possible use and re-use of your research, enabling scholars and scientists everywhere to learn from and build on the results of your research and increasing the potential of digital technologies in research, such as text and data mining, while ensuring that you are always given credit as the creator.

One of the core objectives of the Projekt DEAL negotiations with scholarly publishers is to give authors the greatest reach for their research, establishing the CC-BY license as the gold standard in scholarly publishing. Nevertheless, changing the system takes time, and while the majority of journals included in the DEAL agreements prompt authors to choose the CC-BY license by default, there are a few exceptions. In these cases, authors are encouraged to select the least restrictive Creative Commons license available.

The costs of DEAL contracts are covered by the participating institutions in the DEAL consortium, while the publishers' contractual partner is MPDL Services gGmbH, which in turn invoices the participating institutions. Therefore, publishers do not invoice authors or institutions directly. However, you may wish to check with your library or institution to see if there are any internal contributions to be made by scientific authors.

In general, the DEAL funding mechanism for open access publishing in subscription journals (so-called hybrid Open Access) is based on the reallocation of the former collective subscription expenditure of German universities and research institutions. Read more about this on the "Background and objectives" page.

Please note that the DEAL agreements cover the costs of Open Access publishing, but do not cover any print-related services that you may order for your article in the course of publication, e.g. colour charges, page charges, etc.; these are at your own expense.

To ensure that the special DEAL savings are applied and to alleviate the administrative burden on authors, Article Processing Charges (APCs) of fully open access journals are paid centrally via DEAL and your institution. More and more, institutions are setting up dedicated open access publishing funds, with the support of the DFG, but some institutions may still ask authors to contribute to covering open access publishing fees with their own research funds.

Contact your open access officer or librarian to find out what kind of support is available at your institution.

No. Even if you decline this opportunity for greater impact, by giving up your copyright and making your article only visible to paid subscribers, DEAL has to pay for the service anyway. So why limit your readership to only those who can afford costly subscriptions?

The DEAL agreement is part of a broader strategy to gradually transition subscription-based journals to an open publication model for the benefit of science. Learn more about the DEAL strategy here.

Through the DEAL agreements, your peer-reviewed articles can be published immediately and universally open access, with no paywall or embargo period, giving you the broadest possible readership and potential impact for your article.

Taking this opportunity to publish your article open access, you will contribute to a growing body of openly available research findings, enabling more profound, expansive and impactful studies, accelerating the process of science, itself, whereby new discoveries are built upon previously established results.

The Alliance of German Science Organizations, including the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), the German Rectors’ Conference, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the Leibniz Association, and the Max Planck Society, have established Projekt DEAL to enable open access to research.

The research funding organizations of cOAlition S consider publications that are made freely and immediately available via transformative agreements, such as those negotiated by DEAL, to be fully compliant with the principles of Plan S.

Open access to research contributes to innovation across all aspects of our society. With immediate and open access to the research, doctors and health care works can immediately put the latest discoveries into practice, policy makers can make better-informed decisions, industry can apply new technologies and individuals can be empowered with authoritative information.