Is the ebook set for a renaissance? Springer is banking on it over the next few years, having launched a new eBook initiative at the American Library Association (ALA) conference in New Orleans last month.

As a major global STM publisher, Springer is hoping to steal a lead on its rivals, chief among them Elsevier, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer. It hopes to drive the expansion of the market with an all-inclusive book digitization programme and an open, less punitive pricing policy.

Springer publishes, in PDF and HTML formats, more than 3,000 eBook, eReference Work and eBook series titles on STM subjects each year.

It has now integrated its ebook offerings with articles from online journals on Springerlink. With easier access to the book text, researchers are expected to start increasing their citation levels.

According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, Springer is not expecting exponential growth in ebooks – it's still expected to be a slow burn with incremental advances over a period of time.

But the new pricing policy is significantly different – unlimited access within a university for a year collection ranges from 94,000 Euros for a small institution up to 285,000 Euros for the largest customers.

Collections are now being released by "copyright year", and a special offer is currently available to libraries – buy the 2007 collection, and get the 2006 and 2005 collections thrown in for free.