AI FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

At Springer Nature, we support researchers and add value throughout the science ecosystem. We work closely with the global academic community to verify, publish and share trustworthy research.

With over a third of our people working in tech-heavy roles across more than 40 countries from all over the world, we leverage technologies like AI to make research faster, more accessible and more trustworthy.

To ensure a responsible use of technology, it is important that a human is in the loop and takes responsibility for the final product.

We are using AI in three ways to support researchers and authors

Accelerate discovery

To accelerate scientific progress, we focus on the needs of researchers and help them become more agile and efficient.

Using AI, we equip them with a range of tools and platforms carefully designed to optimise their daily workflows. From automated quality and fact checks to AI-assisted copy editing and translations, AI is helping us improve the quality of their work and enable us to share scientific results faster. By doing so, we allow researchers to focus on their core work: their research.

Nature Research Intelligence

We combine Nature’s 150 years of research expertise with AI to bring information and data to decision-makers, helping them identify promising areas of research and metrics to track progress.

Next generation article processing

With Snapp, we make publishing research a simple and rewarding experience. From submission to peer review to publication, we leverage machine learning technologies introducing enhanced integrity checks, integrating tools to streamline workflow and payment process – delivering on our commitment to provide an intuitive, convenient and rewarding publishing experience.

Text generation and writing assistance

We became the first publisher to create a whole new academic book by empowering authors to use generative AI as part of an integrated, editor-led and secure workflow. This can not only help shorten time to publish but also lower various barriers for researchers and professionals who find it difficult to write and would not be able to author a book without assistance.

Promote equity

Promoting equity © ookawa / Getty Images / iStock

Making scientific knowledge easier to access is crucial for finding solutions to global challenges. Open Science requires transparency and inclusivity. At Springer Nature, we are paving the way forward to make this vision a reality.

Transparency in research helps scientists avoid wasting time by research that has been done before. AI is enabling us to create services to help researchers make all aspects of their discoveries easily accessible, discoverable, usable, reusable and shareable. AI can help people from all backgrounds to become part of progress. For instance, its capability to adapt texts for diverse audiences and purposes facilitates the overcoming of scientific disciplinary boundaries. This is a big opportunity as the challenges of our time can only be solved through global and interdisciplinary research approaches.

Text summarization and Research Round-Ups

We provide auto-generated literature reviews giving our authors access to research across a wide range of disciplines and a foundation on which to build new research. We also use AI to draft and highlight various formats of editorially-selected papers to make them accessible to different target groups. Here, experimenting with AI helps us to understand how we could communicate science more efficiently and effectively,

AI-driven translations

Using AI, we are helping non-native English speaking researchers improve their science communication and we are opening the door to a global readership for our authors. We have already published over 900 books with the help of AI-assisted translation, most of which are translations between German and English.

Developing and sharing reproducible methods

With Protocols.io, we provide a secure and dynamic platform for scientific collaboration. Alongside its offering for hosting protocols, researchers benefit from the ability to write and share methods, supporting greater collaboration and enabling efficient workflows. AI will be helpful to automate the import of protocols and AI-driven search features will support to find the right method more quickly.

Protect integrity

Ensuring research integrity and the trustworthiness of the scientific record is paramount both for scientific progress and practical applications of research. In the age of AI, safeguarding against fraudulent practices within the scientific ecosystem becomes an increasingly important concern.

We protect research integrity by enhancing our ability to detect fraudulent documents faster and more effectively, thereby promoting trust in science. With the help of AI-driven tools and their ability to find specific patterns used by distributors of fraudulent publications, we are able to provide solutions for detecting plagiarism and preventing the publication of fake science generated by large language models.

Detecting invalid text generated by machines

AI tools assist us in detecting potential plagiarism. We also work with AI to detect machine-generated, invalid and nonsense content. Our tool Geppetto is responsible for identifying hundreds of fake papers soon after submission, preventing them from being published – and from taking up editors’ and peer reviewers’ time.

Author and reviewer identity verification

AI is being used to identify possible conflicts of interest created, for example, by past co-authorship, and to enable us to assess that information more quickly before themselves making a decision. This is important to avoid assigning manuscripts to handling editors or to peer reviewers where there is a possible conflict of interest.

Protecting image integrity

AI tools like SnappShot help us review and identify images that are at risk of having been manipulated or invalidated by other means, for example through duplication or mislabeling following poor data management. We continuously expand capabilities in this area to cover additional image types and integrity issues and speed up checks on papers.