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Springer Nature or the Springer Nature Group[1][2] is a German–British academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macmillan Education.[3]
 | |
| Company type | Privately held Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien with an Aktiengesellschaft as general partner |
|---|---|
| Industry | Publishing |
| Founded | 2015 |
| Headquarters | London (global) Berlin (corporate) New York City (sales) |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Frank Vrancken Peeters (CEO) |
| Revenue | US$ 2.1 billion (2022) |
| Owners |
|
Number of employees | 10,000 (2019) |
| Website | www |
| Footnotes / references [1] | |
The company originates from several journals and publishing houses, notably Springer-Verlag, which was founded in 1842 by Julius Springer in Berlin[4] (the grandfather of Bernhard Springer who founded Springer Publishing in 1950 in New York),[5] Nature Publishing Group which has published Nature since 1869,[6] and Macmillan Education, which goes back to Macmillan Publishers founded in 1843.[7]
Springer Nature was formed in 2015 by the merger of Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macmillan Education (held by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group) with Springer Science+Business Media (held by BC Partners). Plans for the merger were first announced on 15 January 2015.[8] The transaction was concluded in May 2015 with Holtzbrinck having the majority 53% share.[9]
IPO attempts in May 2018 and Autumn 2020[10] were unfruitful due to unfavorable market conditions.[11][12]
In 2021, Springer Nature acquired Atlantis Press, an open access publisher founded in Paris in 2006, focusing on scientific, technical, and medical (STM) content, and publication of conference proceedings.[13][14]
After the merger, former Springer Science+Business Media CEO Derk Haank became CEO of Springer Nature.[15] When he retired by the end of 2017, he was succeeded by Daniel Ropers,[16] the co-founder and long-time CEO of bol.com.[17] In September 2019, Ropers was replaced by Frank Vrancken Peeters.[18][19]
The company is releasing several Policies & Reports,[20] including a Modern Slavery Act statement, a Tax strategy, and a gender pay gap report for Springer Nature's UK operations.[21][22]
Springer Nature is a signatory of the SDG Publishers Compact,[23][24] and has taken steps to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the publishing industry.[25][26][27] These include becoming carbon neutral as of 2020,[26] organizing its publications into 17 SDG-related content hubs,[28][29] and launching thematic journals such as Nature Climate Change, Nature Energy, Nature Sustainability,[30] Nature Food, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Water and Nature Cities (appearing 2024).[31] In 2014, the Nature Portfolio series of themed online journals was launched.[32]
Springer's journal Environment, Development, and Sustainability was one of six out of 100 journals to receive the highest possible "Five Wheel" impact rating[33] from the SDG Impact Intensity™ journal rating system, based on an analysis of data from 2016–2020 that assessed relevance to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).[34][35]
Brands
The following major brands belong to the group (see also Subsidiaries):[36]
- Nature
- Springer.com
- BioMed Central
- Scientific American
- Heinrich Vogel Verlag[37]
- SciGraph
In 2017, the company agreed to block access to hundreds of articles on its Chinese site, cutting off access to articles related to Tibet, Taiwan, and China's political elite.[38][39]
The company retracted a paper in 2019, in its journal BMC Emergency Medicine due to a dubious peer-review process (a herpetologist could have denied the publication of the paper).[40]
In August 2020, Springer Nature was reported to have rejected the publication of an article at the behest of its co-publisher, Wenzhou Medical University, from a Taiwanese doctor because the word "China" was not placed after "Taiwan".[41][42]
In July 2020, Springer Nature retracted a paper in the journal Society due to a dubious review process and criticism regarding racism.[43]
In November 2021, Springer Nature retracted 44 nonsense papers from the Arabian Journal of Geosciences after a lapse in the peer review process.[44][45]
In August 2023, after an investigation, Springer Nature retracted a paper that claimed there is no evidence of a global climate crisis.[46][48]
In September 2024, Lucina Uddin, a neuroscience professor at UCLA, sued Springer Nature along with five other academic journal publishers in a proposed class-action lawsuit, alleging that the publishers violated antitrust law by agreeing not to compete against each other for manuscripts and by denying scholars payment for peer review services.[49][50]
- Adis International
- Apress
- Asser Press
- BioMed Central
- Bohn Stafleu van Loghum
- J. B. Metzler
- Macmillan Education
- Nature Research
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Scientific American
- Springer Healthcare
- Springer VS
- Springer Verlag
- Springer Gabler
- Springer Vieweg Verlag
- Springer Medizin
- Springer Pflege
- Springer Nature Technology and Publishing Solutions
- SciGraph
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