Trump team axes contracts with publishing giant Springer Nature

The action comes as high-ranking US officials criticize top journals as ‘woke’ and ‘corrupt’

Government agencies subscribe to academic journals to help their staff members to evaluate research projects for funding and to conduct their own studies.Credit: Getty

The administration of US President Donald Trump this month has cut some government agencies’ subscriptions to journals at Nature’s publisher, Springer Nature. And at least two government agencies say they are terminating all their contracts with the company.

The move comes amid criticisms of top academic journals by high-ranking Trump officials, and will mean that staff members at the affected agencies will no longer be able to easily access the company’s more than 3,000 journals, including the flagship title Nature. (The Nature news team is editorially independent of its publisher, Springer Nature.)

Although it’s unclear precisely how many contracts the Trump administration is terminating, the government-spending database USASpending.gov shows that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) cut US$3 million in contracts with the company earlier this month. A spokesperson for the USDA told Nature's news team that it “has cancelled all contracts and subscriptions to Springer Nature. The journal [sic] is exorbitantly expensive and is not a good use of taxpayer funds”.

When the news team reached out to the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) — the world’s largest funder of biomedical science — asking whether its subscriptions were still intact, a spokesperson initially said they were and that use of these resources helps staff members to “promote transparency and replicability in research”.

Hours later, Andrew Nixon, the top spokesperson for the NIH’s parent agency, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said: “All contracts with Springer Nature are terminated or no longer active. Precious taxpayer dollars should be [sic] not be used on unused subscriptions to junk science.”

The HHS did not answer Nature’s follow-up queries about whether it intended to cut contracts with other large academic publishers, whether this move would prevent government scientists from publishing in journals that charge article-processing fees and whether it could provide examples of “junk science” published by Springer Nature.

A Springer Nature spokesperson said in a statement that the company “continues to have good relationships with U.S. federal agencies” and that it doesn’t comment on individual contracts. “Across our U.S. business there is no material change to our customers or their spend,” they added. So far, the USASpending.gov database doesn’t show any terminations for the NIH or the HHS. In total, the database shows that seven government agencies have contracts meant to pay more than $20 million to Springer Nature this year.

The White House and the DOE did not respond to Nature’s queries. The US National Science Foundation, one of the world’s biggest funders of basic research, told Nature’s news team that its subscriptions with Springer Nature remain active and declined to comment further.

“When they say, ‘junk science’, it’s not clear what they mean,” says Ivan Oransky, a specialist in academic publishing and co-founder of the media organization Retraction Watch. With the lack of details justifying the cuts and because several of Springer Nature’s journals are considered prestigious, Oransky says, “I’m having a hard time taking at face value that this is not political”. It would be unprecedented for a prominent subscriber to make a “sweeping move like this for political reasons”, he adds.

Journals under fire

Late last month, US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr called top medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, “corrupt”, suggesting that they have ties to pharmaceutical companies, and he threatened to bar government scientists from publishing in them. (He did not mention any of Springer Nature’s journals specifically.)