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]
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
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The following major brands belong to the group (see also Subsidiaries):[36]
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]
Lawsuits
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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]
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^Benjamin Robertson, Ruth David, Jan-Henrik Foerster (3 October 2020). "Europe IPO Revival Peters Out as Year's Top German Deal Delayed". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on 7 December 2021. Retrieved 12 November 2020.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
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^Rodenburg, Kathleen; Rowan, Michael; Nixon, Andrew; Christensen Hughes, Julia (January 2022). "The Misalignment of the FT50 with the Achievement of the UN's SDGs: A Call for Responsible Research Assessment by Business Schools". Sustainability. 14 (15): 9598. Bibcode:2022Sust...14.9598R. doi:10.3390/su14159598. ISSN 2071-1050.
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^ abReadfearn, Graham (25 August 2023). "Scientific journal retracts article that claimed no evidence of climate crisis". The Guardian. Retrieved 2023-08-27.
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^Before the paper was retracted, Sky News Australia – a news station priorly outed as a centre for climate change misinformation[47] – published two segments on the paper, which were then subsequently viewed over half a million times on YouTube.[46]
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