On May 29, 2025, the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) and Springer Nature announced a groundbreaking two-year Open Publishing Agreement; the first of its kind in the Americas to offer truly unlimited and uncapped open access publishing in Springer’s hybrid journals. Key highlights: - No fees, no caps, no limits: Faculty, students, and staff at participating BTAA institutions can publish open access articles without paying article processing charges (APCs). - Simplified publishing: Authors retain rights to their work, which is published under a Creative Commons license and made immediately accessible. - Expanded access: All participating campuses gain full read access to over 2,200 Springer hybrid journals, including titles from Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, Adis, and nature.com. - Operational efficiency: The agreement eliminates administrative overhead by centralizing payments and streamlining workflows. - Participating institutions include 14 major research universities such as the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, and University of Wisconsin, with more eligible to join. This agreement reflects a shared commitment to open science, increased research visibility, and equitable access to scholarly publishing.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance congratulates the Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and the University of Illinois (Illinois) at Urbana-Champaign College of Education on receiving the 2025 Senator Paul Simon Awards for Campus Internationalization, presented by NAFSA: Association of International Educators. These prestigious awards underscore the universities’ remarkable dedication to global learning and the transformative ways they are shaping higher education.

For more than 20 years, the Big Ten Academic Alliance has been connecting students across its member institutions with instruction for “less-commonly taught languages” or LCTLs through its CourseShare program. While individual institutions may have difficulty providing multiple LCTLs to their students, the collaborative efforts of the Big Ten Academic Alliance allow students across the member universities to access instruction.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance proudly announces its renewed three-year commitment to the MIT Press’s Direct to Open (D2O) program. This innovative initiative, which has successfully reached its funding goal for 2025, will open access to 80 new scholarly monographs and edited collections, further advancing the global public knowledge commons.