History and Expansion:
– Julius Springer founded Springer-Verlag in Berlin in 1842.
– Ferdinand Springer grew the company into Germany’s second-largest academic publisher by 1872.
– Springer expanded internationally in 1964 with an office in New York City.
– BertelsmannSpringer was formed in 1999 after Bertelsmann acquired a majority stake.
– Springer acquired BioMed Central in October 2008.
Product Offerings:
– Springer launched electronic book and journal content on SpringerLink in 1996.
– SpringerImages was launched in 2008.
– AuthorMapper is an online tool for visualizing scientific research.
– Springer Protocols were made available in SpringerLink in 2018.
– More than 168,000 titles are available as e-books in 24 subject collections.
Open Access Initiatives:
– Springer is a member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.
– Authors can choose to publish under open-access or traditional models.
– Some institutions cover the fee for open-access publishing.
– A national institution in Poland supports open-access publishing.
– Authors are not always required to pay for copyright retention.
Controversies and Retractions:
– In 1938, Springer-Verlag applied Nazi principles on a journal, leading to resignations.
– In 2014, Springer retracted 16 papers generated using SCIgen.
– In 2015, 64 papers were retracted due to a fraudulent peer review process.
– More than 120 gibberish papers were withdrawn in February 2014.
– Major publisher retracted 64 scientific papers in a fake peer review outbreak in August 2015.
Concerns about Bibliometrics and Academic Publishing:
– Academic publishers benefit from manipulation of metrics like the journal impact factor.
– Seven Springer Nature journals had their impact factor suspended in 2020.
– Commercial publishers can influence revenues through bibliometrics.
– Springer was affected by the suspension of journal impact factors.
– Concerns about the impact of bibliometrics on academic publishing persist.
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