Diversity, Equity and Inclusion | Springer Nature | Corporate Affairs Homepage

We are proud to play an active role in promoting and celebrating diversity, equity and inclusion across our company and through our publications and other activities.

It is imperative for us as publishers to find ways to address any problem that is standing in the way of great research, so we seek to collaborate with our communities to raise the bar on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). For Springer Nature Group, working towards an even more inclusive and diverse workplace creates opportunities. It contributes to increasing employee engagement and allows our people to perform at their best and it drives innovation and helps us to cater to the diverse communities we serve.

DEI is one of our highest strategic priorities at Springer Nature. It is a fundamental part of the overall Springer Nature Group Strategy for 2021-2023 and is reflected both in the public commitments we’ve made and the company values that guide our actions. We are a signatory to the Publishers Association’s 10 point Inclusivity Action Plan and the Charta der Vielfalt (German Charter of Diversity) as well as being a Stonewall Diversity Champion and a member of the Valuable 500.

Our strategy

Our internal DEI strategy 2021-23 focuses on supporting our employees, which in turn helps us to better support the research and education communities we serve. Core elements of this strategy cover equitable recruitment, promotion and succession; focused talent development that recognizes structural inequities; individual responsibility for inclusion from staff at all levels and investment in our employee networks.

We are also setting targets to improve representation in global leadership positions. In 2020, we made good progress towards our global target for 45% of leaders in the top three tiers of the organisation to be women by 2023. In 2021, we also established a framework for our external DEI approach, to guide our work focused on our content and our communities - see below.

Read more about our internal DEI strategy

An Inclusive Company Culture

By embedding an inclusive company culture, we strive to ensure that diversity, equity and inclusion become part of the organisational DNA. To promote inclusive decision-making practices, we have introduced mandatory online training on how to identify and address unconscious biases. To ensure that bias doesn’t get in the way of recruiting top talent, we have created a DEI Recruiting Checklist as part of our hiring principles, that supports hiring managers to build diverse candidate pools and manage inclusive hiring processes.

To encourage staff to deliver on their individual responsibility for inclusion, we curate DEI training materials, run training sessions on DEI topics and encourage staff to set personal DEI-related objectives as part of the annual performance processes.

Employee Networks

People perform at their best when they feel valued, respected and have a voice. Our people are key to our success and we want to make sure we seek out and support a broad range of experiences and perspectives.

Our employee networks promote a culture where communities of people connect and empower each other, thrive professionally and share their unique perspectives for the benefit of the organisation. The networks facilitate information sharing, networking, professional and personal development and community outreach.

Find out more about our employee networks

Making new connections to support personal development

Mentoring © Shutterstock / Jacob Lund

Mentoring programme

We want people from different backgrounds, perspectives and with different life experiences to thrive and grow in their careers at Springer Nature. Our mentoring programme connects employees with more experienced colleagues who can support their professional and personal growth. Mentors offer advice, share their experiences and encourage their mentees to develop new skills.

We operate two global mentoring programmes. The first matches mid-level managers from locations currently underrepresented in our leadership teams with a more senior colleague to foster exchange, raise the profile of international talent, and contribute to finding and supporting our leaders of the future. The second focuses on parents and caregivers during the 'rush hour of life' – when career development and parenthood or care responsibility arrive together – matching them with more experienced colleagues who are at a later stage of their career.

“I volunteered to be a mentor as I have not always found it simple to work out the balance of life as a parent and life as a publisher and manager – the reason for this is that it never is simple, whoever you are. So I joined the scheme with the aim of helping someone in a similar position to think around how they are navigating their particular path.”

Victoria Peters, Editorial Director, Humanities

“Getting an outsider’s advice on certain situations has been very valuable to me. I have acted on my mentor’s advice and recommendations a number of times, including immediately after we first met. I found that having someone more removed from the circumstances was helpful in providing an unbiased wider perspective and talking through potential options dispassionately.”

Fiona Pring, Publisher, Medicine and Life Sciences

Championing diversity, equity and inclusion

At Springer Nature we believe that it is vital for us to address any problem that could prevent those who work with us from contributing at their best, or that can stand in the way of great research or education. Our mission is to open doors to discovery, and to enable researchers, educators, clinicians and other professionals to access, trust and make sense of the latest insights so together we can improve and enrich lives and help to protect our planet for future generations. Working to improve diversity, equity and inclusion is essential to achieving this mission; we recognise that systemic barriers exist and believe that by acting purposefully we can achieve meaningful change.

Our DEI strategy has two main streams: an internal focus on our organisations; and another external view into the research, education and professional communities that we are part of. Our external DEI strategy aims to leverage our internal and external networks, brands and voice to champion diversity, equity and inclusion in the communities we serve by actively working to eliminate barriers to creating, discovering and using knowledge, and supporting equitable outcomes in learning and advancing scholarship - from young-learners to PhD-level and beyond.

We will clearly communicate our position and ambition for DEI, by widely sharing the principles internally and with our external partners, including authors, editorial stakeholders, peer reviewers and other business partners.
We will be informed by data, collected responsibly and within legal frameworks, on DEI opportunities in our communities to measure, monitor and further our progress.
We will actively promote DEI by amplifying the work of authors, researchers and academics from underrepresented groups in all stages of their careers, and in accessible formats. Our publishing and editorial policies will promote more inclusive and equitable research practice.
We will work with our external networks - including editorial boards and editorial stakeholders - to further gender, ethnicity, geographical and career stage diversity in our commissioned content, and in our peer review processes.
We will put processes in place to support greater diversity in our supply chain.
We will work with the wider research and education communities to research and understand structural barriers to equality and how we can together make change happen.
We will work with the wider research and education communities in partnerships to address these barriers - including those specific to researchers in the Global South / lower and middle income countries.

A new diversity commitment for Springer Nature’s research publishing

Publishing research that is representative of the entire research community and reflects the growing diversity among researchers, enriches our ability to pose questions and to find solutions to challenges in research and beyond.

Springer Nature has recently agreed to a set of principles so that expectations are clear about how we will take a more active role in accelerating progress on equality, diversity and inclusion. We hope this will, over time, lead to a greater representation of currently under-represented groups in our published content and events. Our commitment to diversity is now shared alongside our other Springer Nature publishing policies and a more detailed set of priorities for Nature Research. We will be taking action to improve diversity and inclusion in the conferences we organise, and in our commissioned content, the peer review population and editorial boards.

Find out more

"Given the extent of Springer Nature’s interactions with researchers, institutions, funders and wider society, we feel we have a duty to do more to actively address diversity in research and to support others in doing so."

Magdalena Skipper,

Editor in Chief, Nature & Chief Editorial Advisor, Nature Research

Journals at Springer Nature