With an unshakeable commitment to quality, openness and innovation, Springer Nature is turning the pages of research to bring greater understanding to the world and help find solutions to society’s big challenges.
In our annual progress report for 2023, find out more about how we are advancing discovery through transformative agreements (TAs), rigorous integrity practices, the latest technologies and a globally interconnected network.
95% of our customers agree we publish ‘rigorous research that can be trusted’
8.5m downloads per day in 2023
1.4m+ open access articles published to date
The desire to discover and understand the world around us starts with our first breath – and never goes away. At Springer Nature, we’re with you every step of this lifelong journey, using our trusted brands, the talent of our people and the latest technologies to provide verified insights that are easy to find, understand, use and build on.
Working closely with the global research community, we publish some of the world’s most influential journals across the broadest range of disciplines. We’re the largest academic book publisher. In schools, we spark the joy of learning and in the workplace, we make the latest research accessible and understandable to clinicians, engineers and other professionals.
We have four complementary business segments:
Research
Education
Health
Professional
We want to grow our business, but in a responsible way and at a pace that allows us to maintain the high standards and impact of our trusted brands.”
Frank Vrancken Peeters, Chief Executive Officer
We’re a global business operating at a local level, publishing trusted information with extensive reach, adding value to researchers, and investing in expertise and new technologies, including generative artificial intelligence (AI), to support our communities.
The global pool of knowledge expands fastest and for the widest benefit when science is open: transparent, trustworthy, accessible and available to all to use, reuse and build on. We’ve been pioneering the shift to open access (OA) for more than 20 years, and are committed to making primary research immediately and freely available.
To accelerate the transition, we are leading the way with TAs, which enable funders and institutions to cover OA publishing costs and subscription access for their affiliated researchers.
Our fully OA portfolio includes the world’s largest fully OA journal, Scientific Reports, as well as more than 600 other fully OA journals across six imprint brands.
To inspire change and progress, we all need research that’s reliable, trustworthy and can be built on by scientists and innovators. As a leading global research publisher, we have a pivotal role to play. At a time when science is increasingly under threat from fraud and misconduct, safeguarding integrity is our highest priority.
We’re committed to promoting integrity throughout the research cycle, from protecting the publication record and providing our editors with the tools to detect and handle problematic content, to supporting the scientific community in applying rigour and good practice. Our approach is driven by our expertise and our substantial investments in people and technology, and through collaboration and leadership in the industry.
It’s not just my team that is deeply committed to research integrity; it’s something that runs through the whole organisation, and I’m really proud of that.”
Chris Graf, Research Integrity Director
India is a very important country for Springer Nature – and for science. Not only do we have nearly 1,800 colleagues working there, it also produces vast amounts of research. In 2023, in collaboration with India’s Ministry of Education, we organised a 22-day journey across the country by bus to support and deepen our engagement with research communities.
The India Research Tour hosted 15 summits in 14 different cities across 10 states, helping us understand more about researchers’ needs and how we can better serve them. Besides workshops, talks and panel discussions, the summits provided an opportunity for academics, students and people from the wider scientific communities to connect and exchange ideas.
In 2023, we maintained our track record of processing more submissions, publishing more articles and books and furthering the shift to OA. We believe that TAs are the best means of delivering a fast, cost-neutral and successful shift to OA globally and on a large scale.
Research published by Springer Nature is used, shared, and built upon by others, enabling the research community to collaborate to develop solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.
| 2019 | 2023 |
|---|---|
| 629 | 770 |
| 2019 | 20221 |
|---|---|
| 3.89 | 4.34 |
| Springer Nature | Our closest competitor |
|---|---|
| 5.9 | 5.0 |
1 Citations for articles published in 2022, in publication year and the year after publication. Source: Digital Science, Dimensions.
We believe in the need for change. Technology is enabling us to expand the global pool of knowledge to move the world, and to deliver more value to our communities by accelerating discovery, promoting equity and protecting integrity.
Our new, unified discovery platform, SpringerLink, is taking us from being primarily a content provider to a place where communities can connect to advance our understanding of the world. The SpringerLink platform offers world-class search and discovery, and puts the researcher at the centre.
Our Snapp platform provides authors, editors and reviewers with a streamlined, simple-to-use experience, from submission to publication. In 2023, we reached the milestone of 1 million submissions through Snapp, 75% of which were OA.
We’ve been successfully using AI tools to serve the research community better for more than a decade, and are excited about its potential to further open up science. Our responsible approach is people centred and focused on the user benefits.
In 2023, our financial performance enabled us to increase our technology-related spend, including personnel costs, to more than €173 million, taking our total investment in these areas to over €470 million since 2021.”
Alexandra Dambeck, Chief Financial Officer
Working at Springer Nature means being part of progress. Every day our 9,400 talented, curious people in 40+ countries make a positive impact by helping researchers, clinicians and educators expand the global pool of knowledge.
We provide the nurturing, innovative environment for our people to do purposeful and rewarding work. And we encourage and support them to reach their full potential so they can enjoy fulfilling, enduring careers. This approach is captured in the promise we make to our people: with us, you can:
We want all our employees to be able to enjoy working for an ambitious, global business that wants our talented people to do well.
Our people work alongside smart, inspiring colleagues in a collaborative and innovative environment that celebrates intellectual curiosity.
We want everyone at Springer Nature to make a positive impact in an open, welcoming and supportive culture that enables them to fully participate and perform at their best.
Publishing work that reflects the entire research community enriches our ability to pose questions and to find solutions to challenges in research and beyond.”
Jessica Gedamu, VP Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a call to action to help solve some of the world’s most pressing problems, from poverty to climate change and inequality. The most significant contribution we can make to achieving the SDGs is through the content we publish.
We disseminate new knowledge on the wide variety of issues represented within the SDGs, and seek to be the publisher of choice for researchers tackling global challenges. We’re investing in our publications, people and technology to make that happen.
In 2023, we celebrated the 180th anniversary of our global brand Macmillan Education with ‘180 Days of Giving Back’. Under the programme, we gave our colleagues in Macmillan Education around the world ‒ from Mexico to Eswatini to India ‒ one day’s leave to volunteer for a charity supporting learning in their region.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to Macmillan’s 180 Days of Giving Back Initiative for renovating our pre-school. This will always be memorable for the children because they are now proud to say it’s their school and it’s beautiful.”
Gugu Ginindza, teacher at Enhlabeni Pre-School, Eswatini