Springer Science

Overview

This profile considers the Springer Scientific+Business Media conglomerate, one of the three largest scientific and professional publishing groups.

It covers -

• introduction
• evolution
• BertelsmannSpringer
• studies

The group results from merger of BertelsmannSpringer (sold by Bertelsmann in 2003) with Kluwer Academic Publishers (sold by Wolters Kluwer in 2002). It is unrelated to the Axel Springer mass media group. Major competitors include Elsevier, Blackwell, Wolters Kluwer and Thomson.

Introduction

Springer traces its origins to establishment of a Berlin bookshop by Julius Springer (1847-1877) in 1842. Springer published a handful of literary, general and political periodicals in the years leading up to the 1848 revolution but thereafter concentrated on scholarly books (particularly in forestry, medicine and pharmacology) and technical journals. The bookshop was sold in 1858; Julius' sons Fritz (1850-1944) and Ferdinand (1846-1906) emphasised the physical sciences, engineering and medicine. In 1889 Springer was responsible for 20 science journals. That climbed to 40 by 1911, 106 in 1928 and 128 in 1933. It gained a dominant position in Germany and a major international profile for scientific publishing, with over 60% of its revenue originating outside Germany in 1931.

The group's advance was disrupted by hyper-inflation during the early Weimar Republic and Aryanisation under the Third Reich, which saw threats to Julius' grandson's Ferdinand Jr (1881-1965) and Julius Jr (1880-1968) and the exile or death of many of the figures who authored/edited the publications. Julius Sr's son Ernst Springer (1860-1944), a lawyer and general manager of the Bleichröder bank, died after deportation to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Fritz took poison when the Gestapo arrived to deport him. Associate Tönjes Lange managed to retain some control of the Springer group.

In 1945 the Springer family sought to protect their interests, and those of their authors, through a UK-based joint venture. Unfortunately that came under control of Robert Maxwell:

BertelsmannSpringer

In 1999 Bertelsmann acquired a controlling stake in Springer Verlag, complementing its acquisition of UK and US publishers such as Doubleday and Random House. Bertelsmann - particularly through its Bertelsmann Fachzeitschriften arm - had been acquiring technical/professional journals and some scientific and medical publishing houses.

BertelsmannSpringer, formed through that acquisition, proceeded to buy specialist publishers, electronic information services, journals, consultancies and even driving schools.

Much of that expansion appears to have been problematical, reflected in sales and management buyouts within five years. As with competitors Taylor & Francis, Thomson, Elsevier and Wolters Kluwer it was marked by complaints that journal prices were increasing beyond the capacity of the consumers (particularly university libraries), that concentration in the scientific & technical information (STI) publishing sector was excessive and that authors/editors did not share in the substantial revenue gained by publishers. In 2003 the US Information Access Alliance for example commented that during past 20 years the prices paid by libraries for journals rose at three times the rate of inflation.

M&A specialists dismissed such concerns, arguing that journals would continue to proliferate, margins would remain respectable and major publishers would not be fundamentally affected by 'open access' academic publishing

In 2002 London-based private equity funds Candover and Cinven acquired Kluwer Academic Publishers (KAP) from Wolters Kluwer. KAP at that time operated worldwide from offices in Dordrecht, New York, Boston, London and Moscow. It employed some 600 people worldwide, annually publishing around 1,200 book titles per year and 675 scientific journals.

Cinven (founded 1977) and Candover (1980) had previously invested in specialist and mass media. Cinven for example had acquired the healthcare and business publishing activities of Vivendi Universal in April 2002 and had formerly owned academic journal and book publisher Routledge (subsequently acquired by Taylor & Francis).

During 2003 Cinven and Candover agreed to buy BertelsmannSpringer from Bertelsmann for €1.05 billion, reported as over ten times the current pre-tax profit.

BertelsmannSpringer at that time published over 700 journals and trade magazines and some 4,000 new book titles per year. It comprised 70 publishing houses, with over 5,000 employees in 16 countries.

The new owners stated an intention to increase the new entity's profit margin to 38%, in line with Elsevier Science. Together KAP and BertelsmannSpringer would encompass 20% of the science journals market, measured by the number of commercial titles included in the Institute for Scientific Information citation database.

Studies

Springer-Verlag was examined in Heinz Sarkowski's Springer-Verlag: History of a Scientific Publishing House, 1842-1945 (Foundation, Maturity, Adversity) (Berlin: Springer 1996) and Heinz Götze's Springer-Verlag: History of a Scientific Publishing House, 1945-1992 (Rebuilding, Opening Frontiers, Securing the Future) (Berlin: Springer 1996). A short version of Sarkowski's monograph appears as a chapter in A Century of Science Publishing (Amsterdam: IOS Press 2001) edited by Einar Fredriksson, which also features an account of Maxwell and Pergamon.

The cascade of acquisitions in recent years mean that BertelsmannSpringer and its successor accumulated a range of publishing houses, including some - such as JF Lehmanns - with a repellent past. Lehmann's activity as a propagandist for antisemitism is explored in Die "rechte Nation" und ihr Verleger: Politik und Popularisierung im J. F. Lehmanns Verlag 1890-1979 (Berlin: Lehmanns 2002) edited by Sigrid Stöckel and Entrepreneurs of Ideology: Neoconservative Publishers in Germany, 1890-1933 (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 1981) by Gary Stark.