BC Partners seeks to sell Springer Nature stake to itself | Financial Times

"Academic publishers have come under pressure to change a subscriptions-based business model to accommodate so-called open-access publishing, which breaks down paywalls and makes often publicly-funded scientific research free to read. Springer Nature had before its first attempted listing in 2018 warned investors that growing pushback against paywalls for publicly-funded research could hurt its revenues. But Frank Vrancken Peeters, the company’s chief executive, told the Financial Times earlier this year that open access publishing “works financially”. In October, the company reached a deal with a consortium of German libraries that bundled the right to read and publish open access under one agreement, the first ever to include its flagship Nature titles. Publishers have been wary of allowing free access to research published in its top journals, fearing it might dilute their value when deals are renegotiated with subscribers...."