When an author submits a manuscript for publishing they will need to sign a license agreement with Springer Nature to allow us to publish their article. According to this agreement:
- authors of articles published in Springer Nature journals retain the copyright of their articles.
- authors grant Springer Nature a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
- authors will retain broad re-use rights to their article content for their future publications.
- when Springer Nature publishes the article we will apply a Creative Commons licence allowing re-use of the article by third parties for particular purposes.
You may also wish to find out about licence variations available to meet funder and institutional OA licence requirements. Learn more in our guide to licensing, copyright and author rights for journal articles.
Exceptions to copyright policy
Our policy pages provide details concerning copyright and licensing for articles which were previously published under policies that are different from the above. For instance, occasionally BMC may co-publish articles jointly with other publishers, and different licensing conditions may then apply. In all such cases, however, access to these articles is free from fees or any other access restrictions.
Information specifically regarding permissions and reprints can be found here. Please contact us if there are questions.