Trusted research. Global impact.

Collaborating with the research community to deliver research that can be relied upon, reused and built upon globally 

Scientific progress depends on trust. 

Working with over a million peer reviewers and 200,000 editors worldwide, we prioritise quality over quantity — strengthening how research is evaluated, published and shared. By continuously improving our processes and responsibly applying technologies such as AI, we inform and support editorial decisions and a more robust scientific record—providing trusted evidence for practitioners, healthcare professionals, businesses, policymakers and wider society.

Research has the greatest impact when it can be openly shared, reused and built upon. 

That’s why we are committed to open access and open science — making rigorously reviewed research widely available while reinforcing accountability. We support these standards by increasing peer‑review transparency, improving the visibility of retractions, and enabling open sharing of data, code and protocols to support global verification and reproducibility.

Research integrity is always at the core

With sustained investment in the people, tools and processes needed to protect the quality of the scientific record. Specialists support our global editorial community, combining expert oversight with advanced technologies to identify and address risks such as image manipulation, fabricated text and false references. We continue to strengthen selectivity and rigour in the research we publish.


This page shows how we put these commitments into practice globally — helping to build confidence in science at scale. To explore our work in more detail, select a country below.

Enabling transparency and reproducibility

Transparency and reproducibility underpin trusted research. They ensure findings can be understood, verified and reused—accelerating discovery and strengthening confidence in the scientific record. 

Global research output is growing rapidly, driven by investment in R&D and the wider role of science in society. Springer Nature answers this call for more science communication by working with its global community to provide trusted high-quality publishing and distribution platforms underpinned by strong editorial oversight. This ensures that research can be rigorously evaluated, widely disseminated and used/re-used across disciplines.

By responsibly supporting growth and investing in open research with carefully embedded AI tools across the publishing process, we continue to support authors, editors and reviewers, where the need it.

Quality, openness, trust and collaboration underpin everything we do — shaping long term partnerships and helping the research ecosystem evolve.

Springer Nature advances these principles through clear publishing policies, open research practices, careful investment in emerging technologies, and long-standing partnerships across the research lifecycle. 


How we support transparent and reproducible research

Transparent and open peer review

Open and transparent peer review, providing access to reviewer and author correspondence reports, encourages greater scrutiny, learning and knowledge sharing.

Registered reports

Pioneered for use by Nature Neuroscience, a Registered Report is a form of empirical article in which the methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and peer reviewed prior to research being conducted. Submissions that pass peer review are provisionally accepted for publication before data collection and/or analyses are done. This format is designed to minimize publication bias and research bias in hypothesis-driven research, while also allowing the flexibility to conduct exploratory (unregistered) analyses and report serendipitous findings. You can read more about Nature’s approach here.

Reusability reports

Introduced by Nature Machine Intelligence, Reusability Reports to highlight good practices in code sharing and reporting. It is there to help assesses how reliably published research can be reproduced by others, examining the transparency of methods, data, and analysis. It helps identify good practice, gaps, and areas for improvement, supporting trust and integrity in the research record.

Protocol sharing

Springer Nature is the world’s largest and most cited (re-used) publisher of research protocols.  Through protocols.io, we enable structured AI- powered protocol sharing within the author submission workflow.

Early sharing of research

Journal‑integrated preprint platforms including InReview, and Research Square, enable faster communication of research and early engagement with the community.

Data sharing

Through our long‑standing partnerships with Figshare, alongside data availability statements we support access, transparency and reproducibility across journals and books.

Data protection and privacy

We protect our customers’ data in line with applicable data protection regulations, applying robust safeguards and secure systems across our platforms. Through transparent practices, we give users clear control over how and where their data is used — helping to build trust in how research is accessed, shared and applied.

Code sharing

Our partnership with Code Ocean enables integrated code and data sharing, supporting  verification and reuse.


Partnerships and community engagement

Partnerships underpin our approach. By working with funders, institutions and organisations worldwide, we advance open science and OA in ways that support inclusivity, reuse and reproducibility — helping to strengthen shared standards for research globally.


Working collaboratively across the research ecosystem.

Working collaboratively across the research ecosystem.

Our research advisory councils bring together stakeholders across regions including the US, China, Japan, Africa, South America, Australia, and Europe. These annual forums encourage research leaders, experts and early‑career researchers to exchange insights and best practices, helping us respond to the needs of different research communities.

Understanding and responding to researcher needs

Understanding and responding to researcher needs

We play an active role in tracking how research practices evolve. Together with Figshare and Digital Science, we publish the State of Open Data report — the longest-running global study of open research behaviour. Insights from this and other longitudinal studies help inform policy, identify gaps and guide the continued development of open science support.

Adapting to partner needs, enabling impact

Adapting to partner needs, enabling impact

Through an OA Agreement with LYRASIS, Springer Nature champions OA publishing across around 120 institutions, including eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities. This partnership expands access to scholarly content while creating institution‑supported routes for researchers to publish OA, strengthening participation in the academic record through trusted, collaborative networks.

Safeguarding the scientific record

As a scientific publisher, Springer Nature plays a central role as a custodian and curator of the scientific record 


Harsh Jegadeesan

“Safeguarding research integrity is fundamental to trust in the research we publish and the value it delivers to the global research community. As research activity grows in scale and complexity, new integrity challenges arise. In response, we continue to strengthen our approach—working with researchers, editors, institutions and partners to protect the reliability of the published record.”

Harsh Jegadeesan, Chief Publishing Officer

This commitment is reflected in our editorial selectivity. Acceptance rates have declined from 36% in 2015 to 16.3% in 2025 - demonstrating our continued focus on publishing sound, high‑quality research.

Integrity safeguards are embedded throughout our publishing process, from submission to post‑publication. At every stage, decisions are guided by independent editorial judgement, specialist expertise and technology‑enabled checks -  always with human oversight.

Integrity sits at the heart of what we do. We have built a scalable infrastructure, focused on people, technology, process and prevention - led by our 75 integrity specialists and supported by hundreds of colleagues across the company. 

Springer Nature continues to invest in and develop state-of-the-art technology including AI‑enabled systems, to help identify potential issues early. This includes creating and building custom tools in-house that help identify suspicious content, such as AI-generated text and images, manipulated or false references, and plagiarism.  

Combined with clear policies and ongoing collaboration with the research community, these measures help ensure the research record remains robust, transparent and trustworthy.

Further detail on our approach is available through our retraction data, editorial policies and integrity training resources. 


Delivering value through trusted research

Springer Nature enables the communication of high‑quality, reliable research at scale — supporting discovery, learning and evidence‑based progress. 
 

Through brands trusted for more than 180 years, we enable the communication of sound research across disciplines. In 2025, more than 3.1 million manuscripts were submitted to our journals for evaluation and over 14,500 books were published. Growing citation impact and usage reflect the strength of our editorial approach and our contribution to a trusted global research record.

Alongside this, our responsible approach to scalable open access is increasing the visibility and impact of research, with Transformative Agreements enabling ten times more gold open access articles than those published outside such agreements (2024) —enabling a sustainable transition to OA, globally, for all.


Publishing trusted research with reach (in 2025):

3.1m manuscripts submitted; 539k primary research articles published. 14.5k books created, reviewed, improved and published.

Published over 50% of the highest-impact journal titles, with Springer Nature journal ranking #2 among the top 3 journals in 109 categories.

Acceptance rates down from 36% (2015) to 16.3% (2025)—six submissions now assessed for every article published (vs. three ten years ago)—demonstrating a continued focus on quality and research integrity.

5.6bn global content downloads, including 860m SDG‑related downloads—equivalent to 178 downloads per second.

53%+ of primary research published immediately open access, delivering 10x more downloads and 1.6x more citations vs. non‑OA content.

85+ transformative agreements across 4,400+ institutions, enabling 63,000+ OA articles in 2025 (+12% YoY).

Delivering measurable impact for research and society (in 2025):

14% increase in average citations per article. 9% increase in average citation for OA articles.

53% increase in downloads vs. 2024

Author satisfaction remains high, with 87% rating their experience as good or excellent.

No.1 publisher with highest reputation globally, #1 in Germany with doctors and in the Netherlands with healthcare practitioners.

1.4m SDG‑related articles published to date (62% OA in 2025), supporting progress on global challenges. Gold EcoVadis sustainability rating for the second consecutive year, placing us in the top 50% of companies assessed globally.

Our content is shaping real‑world outcomes, with 44.3k+ articles cited in policy documents and 75.8k+ cited in patents (between 2018–2025).

Embedded AI tools deliver scale, support speed and integrity (in 2025):

Editor Evaluation tool was used across nearly half a million manuscripts, helping editors rapidly know if a paper is based on sound science.

500,000+ ‘clicks to submit’ took place via Journal Finder, helping authors quickly identify the best journal for their work.  

Journal Transfer Recommender made over half a million transfer recommendations (a 40% increase on 2024) helping authors find a more suitable home for their manuscript, taking funding options into account. 

Peer Reviewer Recommender generated over 400,000 recommendations, helping speed up the process by identifying appropriate reviewers more efficiently.

AI tools identified 25,000 papers as having issues such as image manipulation, fake references and fabricated text.