Move will increase authors’ access to best-in-class research solutions
RSC comprises American Journal Experts (AJE), which provides best-in-class AI-powered and professionally delivered author solutions, and Research Square, the world’s number one multi-disciplinary preprint platform.
After a long partnership and period of partial ownership, Springer Nature has increased its investment in Research Square Company (RSC) to take full ownership.
The acquisition reflects the shared ambition of the two companies to provide faster, better, quality-assured author solutions. This includes helping authors improve their manuscripts prior to submission and share their research both before and after publication.
It will strengthen Springer Nature’s ability to provide solutions designed to better meet the needs of all researchers and bring forward the open science revolution. For example:
· AJE’s best-in-class digital editing tools and leading Research Impact Solutions help authors get published and increase awareness of their research post publication
· Research Square’s multidisciplinary preprint platform allows every author to enjoy the benefits of sharing their research early
Frank Vrancken Peeters, Chief Executive of Springer Nature, said:
“I am delighted to welcome Research Square as a full member of the Springer Nature family. This allows us to further champion the needs of the research community by providing a full suite of solutions across the publishing value chain for researchers”.
Shashi Mudunuri, Founder of Research Square Company, said:
“Springer Nature’s acquisition of Research Square Company builds on a wonderful partnership developed over many years, based on our common values. It allows our teams to work even more closely together to create a more researcher-centred publishing ecosystem.”
Harsh Jegadeesan, Springer Nature’s Chief Solutions Officer, further commented:
“Combining expertise across both companies enables us to provide best-in-class author solutions, so that all researchers can be assessed fairly and equally on the quality of their work. It puts us on the path to become the number one platform and solutions provider for open science.”
The partnership between the two organisations dates back to 2008 when AJE began providing journal editing services to Nature authors. Springer Nature invested in AJE in 2016, and in 2018, became a minority owner of the Research Square platform. Additional investment in 2020 saw Springer Nature become majority owner of both the Research Square platform and AJE.
Over this time, this partnership has seen:
- More than 180,000 preprints posted on Research Square, making it the fastest growing preprint server
- Launch of In Review, the integrated preprint deposition service, now available on over 700 Springer Nature’s journals, including the Nature titles
- Language barriers eliminated for thousands of international researchers with the AJE team editing more than 1 million papers across 447 areas of study
