Value of Publishing at Springer Nature

A commitment to transparency in what we do and what it delivers

Springer Nature is committed to quality, openness and collaboration. This goes beyond just what we do, but encompasses who we are as a publisher and how we do it - Why? Because we know as a global publisher we have a duty to hold ourselves accountable and ensure that the communities we serve can transparently see how we are supporting them as the research ecosystem evolves.

Authors

Authors are at the heart of what we do, and we are committed to ensuring their work is used, reused and has the greatest reach.

  • Our content was downloaded 3.7billion times, across all platforms in 2024 - an 18% increase in downloads for research content compared to 2023. 

  • Usage of our author’s content continues to increase year on year, with journal articles being cited on average 5.2 times per article, up 4% on 2023. Average cost per download, however, has fallen c.37% since 2019 (books and journals, excluding OA content).

  • We have an 86% excellent/ good rating from authors and are ranked no.1 in terms of reputation, compared to our competitors.

  • We continue to offer the broadest selection of fully OA journals, appearing across more JCR categories than other publishers, and offer the most comprehensive OA books portfolio of any publisher. 

  • Our journals and books provide multiple comparable metrics of reach, impact and author service on their website, which for journals are also available on third-party comparison sites such as DOAJ.

  

Librarians

We work closely with the librarian community to support the research community with the tools and sustainable services it needs to access, produce and maintain the integrity of research.

  • Flexible pricing policies to ensure budget is allocated to the most relevant resources.
  • Adaptive business model to help institutions and librarians make a sustainable move to OA, meeting different regional needs.
  • Long-term journal packages and variety on books licensing options to provide best value, and ensure stable and sustainable pricing in face of policy, funding and other global changes.
  • Strict no double dipping policy - our journal subscription list prices are based only on subscription content. We do not count OA articles when assessing changes.
  • More information for librarians can be found here,  here and here

Community commitment

Driving OA value across our books and journals portfolios

Find out more about our APC, BPC, Waiver and OA policies.

Transparent Pricing

We annually review our pricing to ensure consistency and sustainability across our portfolios. 

Our APC pricing reflects both the value that the journals deliver as well as the costs involved in: 

  1. Managing peer review
  2. Publishing
  3. Promotion
  4. Author support
  5. Investment in improving systems to deliver a superior and sustainable service.

Subscription price is based on a number of factors including:

  1. Number of subscription articles published by the journal
  2. Article usage
  3. Value placed on the content by the wider community
  4. Inflation and other variable costs are also taken into consideration                           

Individual customers are provided with detailed information taking into account the above factors and related to their specific accounts