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]
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Type | Privately held Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien with an Aktiengesellschaft as general partner |
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Industry | Publishing |
Founded | 2015 |
Headquarters | London, UK (global) Berlin, Germany (corporate) New York City, USA (sales) |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
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Revenue | US$1.72 billion (2019) |
Owners |
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Number of employees | 10,000 (2019) |
Website | www |
Footnotes / references [1] |
The company originates from a number of 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 2006 in Paris, 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 a number of Policies & Reports,[20] including a Modern Slavery Act statement, a Tax strategy, a gender pay gap report for Springer Nature’s UK operations,[21][22] Editorial and publishing policies, Code of conduct, etc.
The following major brands belong to the group (see also Subsidiaries):[23]
In 2017, the company agreed to block access to hundreds of articles on its Chinese site, cutting off access to articles on Tibet, Taiwan, and China's political elite.[25][26]
The company retracted a paper in 2019, in its journal BMC Emergency Medicine due to dubious peer-review process (a herpetologist could have denied the publication of the paper).[27]
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."[28][29]
In July 2020, Springer Nature retracted a paper in the journal Society due to dubious review process and criticism regarding racism.[30]
In November 2021, Springer Nature retracted 44 nonsense papers from the Arabian Journal of Geosciences after a lapse in the peer review process.[31][32]
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