Penny Freedman

5 Things to Know About the Springer Nature Brands

When it comes to choosing a publisher for your research the options can seem vast and endless. At Springer Nature we aim to give you the best publishing experience throughout every step of your research career. Starting from your first journal article to your fifth book, your research has a spot in one of our many brands that cover the breadth of disciplines and fields in the scientific publishing world. 1- We’re made up of eight distinct and unique brands that each have their own identity that fits in within the larger Springer Nature umbrella. Springer: A leading STM, humanities and social … Read more…

Behind the Scenes: Working With Internal Editors to Grow Your Journal

Across the Springer Nature family of brands Editors-in-Chief work with internal editors to help develop and promote their journal and its content. Whether an internal editor is referred to as a journal development editor, publishing editor, or simply just an editor, the support they provide is instrumental in the journal’s development. We’ve outlined eight ways that internal editors work to ensure the growth of journals in their portfolios: Communicate with editors-in-chief, society contacts, editorial board members and any other journal stakeholders on all publishing matters, ensuring that any issues or questions related to the publishing process are addressed Work alongside … Read more…

Researching the Impact of Social Media on Scholarly Articles

What happens when you share your article on social media? How much of an impact does it make on your research? In Tracking the digital footprints to scholarly articles from social media from Scientometrics, the authors take a closer at the important role social media has at disseminating scholarly articles. Social media plays an important role in directing people to scholarly articles, which is confirmed for the first time with real data in this study. According to our empirical study with 110 sample articles, article visits directed by social referrals account for about 12.10 % (final period) to 15.41 % (initial period) of total visits. … Read more…

8 Ways Researchers in China are Utilizing Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are likely familiar names if you’re an academic in the Western world. You’ve probably utilized one of these channels to promote your research. If you haven’t started yet, read more posts here to get started. However, fellow researchers in China do not typically have access to these platforms. China has a robust network of social media platforms. The most popular, WeChat serves as the go-to app for anything and everything including sharing updates, photos, messaging, transferring money and much more. Last year we conducted a survey at Springer Nature to gain a better understanding of how … Read more…

Answering 7 Frequently Asked Author Questions

When you’re ready to publish a journal article or book there are many questions that come up throughout the publication process. The work you’ve done is important to you and the questions you have deserve accurate responses. We want to make it easy to get the answers you need. We’ve compiled seven frequently asked questions from our authors below. Answers to any and all of your questions can be found via our Springer or Nature help desks. How much does it cost to publish in a Springer journal? If you wish to publish in an Open Access (“SpringerOpen”) journal or … Read more…

Tips from an Author: Writing a Book That Isn’t Traditionally Academic

Cliff Spiro is the author of From Bench to Boardroom: The R&D Leader’s Guide. After 15 years at GE’s Corporate Research lab as a scientist and manager, he went on to lead R&D groups in silicone rubber, halogen lamps, water, paper, energy chemicals, and semiconductor processes. We asked him a few questions about his experience writing a book for Springer Nature that falls outside of the traditional academic framework. By: Cliff Spiro 1. What was the process like for writing your book, From Bench to Boardroom? Did you pitch the idea first or already have a manuscript written? Several years ago at … Read more…

What’s Next for Impact Factors?

 By: Steven Inchcoombe, Chief Publishing Officer at Springer Nature The announcement of the latest Journal Impact Factors has prompted the expected heated discussion around their value, importance and relevance to authors, funders and the rest of academia. Despite all of these challenges and reservations, the Impact Factor is still noted by authors as one of the top elements they take into account when deciding which journal to submit their work to, and this got me thinking about the criticism publishers face for referring to Impact Factors when talking about the performance of their journals and making comparisons. I recently had … Read more…

Researching the Value of the Impact Factor

Impact factors were released this week. The impact factor has long been a measure of a journal’s research output, but in recent years there have many attempts to find alternative ways to expand how research is assessed. This excerpt from Diversity, value and limitations of the journal impact factor and alternative metrics in Rheumatology International explores some of the many other measurements available today.  Over the past decades, there have been many attempts to overcome limitations of the popular JIF and to propose new citation metrics bearing more comprehensive information on citable sources and their scientific value. The latter has become … Read more…

Service Spotlight: Article Level Metrics

Article-level metrics provide an alternative option to the well-known impact factor when measuring the impact of a journal’s research. Each journal article’s SpringerLink page includes Altmetrics data that explores how the article is being cited, used and discussed on the social web. An overview: Article-level metrics allow authors and editors the ability to see a wide range of metrics that cover article coverage across social media and the internet. How are these metrics calculated? We partner with Altmetrics, who track multiple sources to help better monitor and report the attention research receives. What sources are metrics collected from? When available, … Read more…

How important are open access books to academic authors?

By: Christina Emery How important are open access books to academic authors? To kick off Academic Book Week in April, Springer Nature held a free event for researchers exploring open access (OA) books, discussing topics such as why academics publish OA books, how the impact of their research can be tracked, and the future of OA book funding. Researchers in the hard sciences are more familiar with the concept of open access article publishing, but we were interested in talking to researchers across various disciplines, including the Humanities and Social Sciences, specifically about OA books. You can read what the … Read more…