New report shows publishing in Springer Nature’s fully OA portfolio delivers greater benefits for authors than its competitors
Authors enjoy higher usage and downloads for their research
London | New York | Heidelberg, 11th August 2022
A comprehensive analysis of Springer Nature’s fully open access (OA) portfolio of over 580 journals released today, shows the tangible impact publishing in these journals is having for its authors and the research communities it serves.
Comparing available public data [1] on fully OA portfolios from hybrid and pure OA publishers, the report shows that authors publishing in Springer Nature’s fully OA journals benefit from:
- More people seeing and downloading their work - articles achieve on average 7000+ downloads per article, which can be up to 5x more than articles published in another publisher’s fully OA journals;
- More people reading and using their work - an average of 7.39 citations per article, the highest of all fully OA journals across OA publishers;
- The ability to publish in the broadest selection of fully OA journals of all publishers - titles appearing across more JCR categories (139) than any other fully OA journal publisher.
Commenting, Springer Nature’s VP Journals, Fully OA, Meredith LeMasurier commented:
“For over 20 years, we have been committed to driving a sustainable transition to OA. Since Springer became the first publisher to offer authors an OA choice on its subscription journals and BMC became part of what we now know as Springer Nature, OA has been part of our DNA. We now have many new levers at our disposal such as transformative journals and transformative agreements to help drive the transition to OA, but at the centre remains our long standing heritage of fully OA journals.
“This report, for the first time, demonstrates the real impact of fully OA publishing at Springer Nature, and the tangible benefit that this has for our author’s globally through the use and re-use of their work.”
Springer Nature now has a portfolio of over 580 fully OA journals across three imprints [2]- Nature, Springer and BMC, and is also publisher for the largest fully OA scientific journal in the world, Scientific Reports, which in 2021 published over 23,000 papers making it one of the top six cited journals globally. Springer Nature continues to drive forwards OA not only through its fully OA portfolio, but also through the introduction of new routes to OA be that through its transformative agreements (TA), new fully OA journals, books and platforms, or through the development of transformative journals (TJ). Driving the opening up of research and the development of open science, remains Springer Nature’s primary focus in serving the research community with a commitment to have over 50% of all its primary research published OA by 2024.
The full report can be accessed here
More information on Springer Nature’s wider commitment to OA and our full OA offerings can be found here
[1] Public sources include Digital Science, Dimensions; Clarivate’s 2021 Journal Citation Reports; and Web of Science
InCites
2 Springer Nature has 7 imprints in total publishing pure and hybrid OA journals - these include Springer, Nature Portfolio, BMC, Palgrave Macmillan, Apress, Adis, J B Metzler
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Notes to Editors
The report compares available public fully OA data only, from hybrid and fully OA publishers.
For over 180 years Springer Nature has been advancing discovery by providing the best possible service to the whole research community. We help researchers uncover new ideas, make sure all the research we publish is significant, robust and stands up to objective scrutiny, that it reaches all relevant audiences in the best possible format, and can be discovered, accessed, used, re-used and shared. We support librarians and institutions with innovations in technology and data; and provide quality publishing support to societies.
As a research publisher, Springer Nature is home to trusted brands including Springer, Nature Portfolio, BMC, Palgrave Macmillan and Scientific American. For more information, please visit springernature.com and @SpringerNature
Katie Baker | Head of Communications | Springer Nature
katie.baker@springernature.com
