As often happens, major academic publishers set unreasonable conditions in their contract negotiations with the Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries, and Swiss universities will start 2026 without a contract to access new publications in SAGE journals and SpringerNature titles, nor possibilities to publish articles open access in these. What does this mean, how does this affect researchers, and how can you help in our struggle against attempts at implementing leonine contracts?
The situation in brief
Read and Publish agreements are negotiated nationally every few years with major academic publishers. These simultaneously allow access to new research and include APCs for open access publications. Since academic publishing is largely controlled by an oligopoly of private companies and library budgets are not infinite, negotiations are tough, and positions sometimes incompatible. This happened with Wiley last year and others previously, and in practice, this means that:
- Access to articles published before 2026 is still covered by our previous agreements and will remain active.
- We will no longer have access to paywalled articles published in SAGE or SpringerNature journals later than 2025 unless a new contract is signed.
- Our researchers can no longer publish open access articles in SAGE or SpringerNature journals without article processing charges. In previous cases, articles accepted after January 1st were included in retroactive deals signed later in the year.
Read more in the Consortium’s overview and FAQ.
How can researchers help?
Here is how you can put some pressure on SAGE Publishing and SpringerNature to help us convince them to offer more reasonable terms:
- Do not submit any article to a SAGE or SprigerNature journal until the conclusion of a new agreement.
Your free work is the main source of value for journal publishers. As employees of the Institute and members of the Swiss academic community, you should not provide free work for a company that is trying to extract rent from our libraries at the expense of knowledge production. Submit to a journal published with more sustainable practices in mind. - Refuse reviewing articles for SAGE or SpringerNature journals.
Again, this is free work you would be providing to a publisher that has decided to use its position as the exclusive provider of important journals to demand excessive financial contributions and unacceptable copyright limitations. - If you are an editor for a SAGE or SpringerNature journal:
- Contact the publisher to encourage them to revise their proposal to Swiss institutions.
- Talk with your co-editors about the possibility of flipping the journal to a non-commercial publisher. You should still be aware of the challenges involved in such a change.
How does this affect publication?
If your research is not funded by the SNSF
- You can publish in any journal, including behind a paywall, so the impact is minimal.
- If you have not yet submitted your article, consider submitting it to a journal that offers free open access or is covered by our read & publish agreements.
- If you have already submitted your article, just send your accepted manuscript to the Library. It will be archived and published on the Geneva Graduate Institute repository after the shortest possible embargo period. This will allow Unpaywall and other tools to retrieve it.
- In the case of a Gold or Hybrid open access journal, paying the APC from your own pocket is still possible, but it may hurt our negotiating position. The Library will generally not cover APCs outside of its agreements.
If your research is funded by the SNSF, ERC, or another institution requiring open access publication
- If the journal is a fully open-access title (Gold OA), publication fees can be paid from your SNSF/ERC/other budget. Please note that in some previous cases, the SNSF decided to align with universities and refused to pay APC to the publishers until a new deal was signed.
- If publishing in a hybrid-access journal, the SNSF will not cover your APC.
- As for closed-access titles, check if the journal’s policy allows self-archiving: the SNSF requires that you follow the rights retention strategy upon submission of your article, i.e. assert your ownership of the work and publish your accepted manuscript (AAM) on an institutional repository. If you failed to do so, you can still contact the publisher after the fact: you are expected to prove fair efforts in trying to find a solution for open access.
- Either way, send the AAM to the Library so we can publish it as soon as possible, after an embargo if necessary.
How long will this last?
No-deal situations have become a regular occurrence. This may take only a few months to resolve, or it may be permanent, as is the MIT’s breakup with Elsevier in 2020 and other such examples. One publisher may accept terms that the other will reject. We will keep you informed if the situation evolves, but we encourage you to reflect on the type of academic publishing you wish to see in the future. This may be one without large monopolies.
Don’t forget: you are not alone. The Library team is here to help. Please do not hesitate to send us your questions. If access gets cut, here are some recommendations on how to get access from the Library and SwissUniversities.
This blog post was edited on December 12, 2025 to add mentions to SpringerNature. The previous version only referenced SAGE Publishing.
Header photograph: Benjamin Child (Unsplash licence)
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