October 27, 2010, Beijing, China-- Chinese Academy of Sciences signed CAS IR Framework Agreement with Springer, which is the first organization who has signed this kind of agreement in the Asia-Pacific region. The agreement allows the authors of Chinese Academy of Sciences to archive their final draft articles published by Springer into the institutional repositories of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Professor Li Jinghai, Vice President of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pan Jiaofeng, Deputy Secretary-general of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Peter Hendriks, President of STM Publishing & Marketing of Springer and Maurice Kwong, Asia Director General Manager of Springer attended the signing ceremony. Professor Li Jinghai and Peter Hendriks signed the agreement.

According to the agreement, Springer allows all the authors of Chinese Academy of Sciences to archive their final draft version paper published on the Springers journals into the institutional repositories, and distribute to open access after 12 month embargo period. The agreement has priority if conflict with the copyright transfer agreement.

In order to preserve the institutional intellectual assets, promoting distribution and open access of public funding research results, many countries and organizations request their researchers to archive their articles in institutional repositories and open access. Although many publishers have allowed self-archiving in the Copyright Transfer Agreement, authors still worried about that open access would conflict with the Copyright Transfer Agreement, which hinders authors’rights they should have or already have. The agreement will promote the research results distribution and will reflect the leading role of Chinese Academy of Sciences in promoting open access practice in China.