Publishing agreements for authors affiliated with US Government Contractors and US National Laboratories

Journal authors affiliated to US Government Contractors who are prevented from personally signing our standard publishing agreements and require a non-standard copyright line to be added to their article upon publication should fill in the below form as soon as possible after submission of their article. 


Upon receipt of this request, our Author Service team will: 

  1. Arrange for (a) non-standard publishing agreement(s) to be generated and signed*.
  2. For articles submitted to a
    • Subscription or fully open access journal**, liaise with the Editorial Office to request that the standard publishing agreements are not sent to authors upon editorial acceptance.
    • Hybrid or Transformative journal***, ensure the system handling publishing agreements and payments after editorial acceptance bypasses the standard publishing agreements. 
  3. Liaise with the journal's Editorial and Production team to ensure they are aware of the required non-standard copyright line to be used upon publication of the article.
  4. Confirm to the author that the non-standard requirements have been shared with the journal and that authors are advised to ensure they have been implemented upon checking the proofs for their article.

The publishing agreement generated will include a clause voiding it, should the submission made not be accepted for publication and will also accommodate small changes to the title of the article throughout the peer-review process.


  • Where not all authors of the article are affiliated to the US Government Contractor, separate publishing agreements will be generated and sent for signature to the relevant signatory.
  • Please note that some fully open access journals require the submitting author to tick a box agreeing to the standard publishing agreement as part of the submission process. In such instances, authors should tick this box to be able to proceed and the values will then be manually overridden by our Author Service team.
  • The publishing agreement which will be generated differs depending on the publishing model chosen for the article. The form below requires authors to indicate which publishing model they intend to have their article published under to that effect. Please note that this choice will be entered into the system, meaning the author will no longer have the option to choose a publishing model after editorial acceptance.

    The form is only available in English. If you are unable to complete the form since it is only available in English, please email the authorsupport@springernature.com.

    Some plug-ins, add-ins or local security settings may prevent the form from displaying below. If this happens, open the form so it appears in a new window.


Mandatory fields are marked with an asterisk (*).




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