Authors retain copyright of all Open Access (OA) articles published by Springer Nature.
Authors publishing their articles OA will sign an OA licence to publish agreement (LTP), and grant non-exclusive rights to Springer Nature where a CC BY licence is selected, or exclusive commercial and derivative rights where CC BY-NC-ND is chosen. See also What are the differences between CC BY and CC BY NC ND licences?.
Authors are advised to check their funder's open access (OA) requirements, to ensure compliance.
Certain funders require grantees to publish with a specific OA licence, CC BY.
Check our list of funders with Creative Commons licence requirements, and learn more about funder OA requirements.
Where the costs of OA publication are covered by an institutional or funder OA agreement, the OA licence options available to authors may vary according to the agreement terms, many of the agreements mandate the use of CC BY licence.