Springer Science+Business Media
Julius Springer opened a small bookshop in Berlin on the 1st of January 1842. The firm began with just four employees working within its first year. His son Ferdinand took over operations and grew the staff to sixty-five people by 1872. This expansion made it Germany's second-largest academic publisher at that time. The company adopted a chess knight as its logo because the German word for jumper describes both the piece and the family name. International growth arrived in 1964 when an office opened in New York City. Offices in Tokyo, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, and Delhi followed shortly after.
Bertelsmann bought a majority stake in Springer-Verlag in 1999 to form BertelsmannSpringer. British investment groups Cinven and Candover purchased the company from Bertelsmann in May 2003. They merged this entity with Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004 to create Springer Science+Business Media. Private equity firms EQT AB and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation acquired the business in February 2010. BC Partners then bought a majority stake for $4.4 billion in 2013. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Springer announced their merger in January 2015. The transaction concluded in May 2015 forming Springer Nature with Holtzbrinck holding 53% and BC Partners retaining 47%.
Springer launched electronic book and journal content on its SpringerLink site in 1996. SpringerImages appeared as a new platform in 2008. A database called Landolt-Börnstein became accessible through SpringerMaterials in 2009. AuthorMapper allows users to visualize scientific research by mapping author locations geographically. This tool helps identify literature trends and discover collaborative relationships across fields. More than 168,000 titles are available as e-books within twenty-four subject collections today. Laboratory protocols once found in Springer Protocols moved to SpringerLink in 2018.
Nazi principles forced Springer-Verlag to remove Jewish editor Tullio Levi-Civita from Zentralblatt MATH in 1938. Otto Neugebauer resigned from the editorial board in protest along with most of his colleagues. Computer-generated papers using SCIgen software appeared in conference proceedings published by Springer in 2014. The company retracted all papers from these specific proceedings after the fraud was discovered. IEEE removed over one hundred fake papers from its own conference proceedings during that same period. Sixty-four papers were retracted from ten journals in 2015 following an investigation into fraudulent peer review processes.
Commercial publishers benefit from manipulation of bibliometrics like the journal impact factor according to Goodhart's law. Academics signatories of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment argue this influences revenues and public subsidies. Seven Springer Nature journals had their 2019 impact factors suspended in 2020 due to unusual self-citation levels. This sanction affected thirty-four journals in total within the Journal Citation Reports system. Public institutions sometimes cover open-access fees for authors instead of charging them directly. A national institution in Poland allows authors to publish without personal cost using public funds.
Adis International operates as a distinct imprint under the larger corporate structure. Apress publishes technical books while BioMed Central handles open access research. Chemistry Central and Kluwer Academic Publishers are now defunct imprints no longer active. Birkhäuser Verlag continues publishing mathematics and science texts today. Current Medicine Group focuses on medical literature alongside Humana Press. Springer Gabber and Springer Praxis Books remain active divisions handling specialized topics. The company maintains major offices in Berlin, Heidelberg, Dordrecht, and New York City. Selected publications include Cellular Oncology and the Encyclopaedia of Mathematics series.
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Common questions
When did Julius Springer open his bookshop in Berlin?
Julius Springer opened a small bookshop in Berlin on the 1st of January 1842. The firm began with just four employees working within its first year.
How was Springer Science+Business Media formed from previous companies?
Springer Science+Business Media resulted from merging Springer-Verlag and Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2004 after British investment groups Cinven and Candover purchased the company from Bertelsmann in May 2003. Private equity firms EQT AB and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation acquired the business in February 2010 before BC Partners bought a majority stake for $4.4 billion in 2013. Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and Springer announced their merger in January 2015 which concluded in May 2015 forming Springer Nature.
What digital platforms does Springer Science+Business Media operate today?
Springer launched electronic book and journal content on its SpringerLink site in 1996. SpringerImages appeared as a new platform in 2008 while a database called Landolt-Börnstein became accessible through SpringerMaterials in 2009. Laboratory protocols once found in Springer Protocols moved to SpringerLink in 2018.
Why did Nazi principles force changes at Springer-Verlag in 1938?
Nazi principles forced Springer-Verlag to remove Jewish editor Tullio Levi-Civita from Zentralblatt MATH in 1938. Otto Neugebauer resigned from the editorial board in protest along with most of his colleagues.
Which journals had their impact factors suspended by Springer Nature in 2020?
Seven Springer Nature journals had their 2019 impact factors suspended in 2020 due to unusual self-citation levels. This sanction affected thirty-four journals in total within the Journal Citation Reports system.