“The challenges the UN SDGs set out to address are things that need to be informed by high-quality academic research,” says Springer Nature’s Nicola Jones.
Interview with Nicola Jones, Springer Nature
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What’s the lucky number for Springer Nature’s SDG publishing program? The answer is 17, for 17 content hubs covering all 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The 17 SDG hubs bring together multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed research content from across Springer Nature’s output of journals and books, including its flagship publication, Nature. The effort aims to connect policy and business professionals with the research that can provide the information and the evidence they need to resolve global development challenges – from eliminating poverty and hunger to delivering quality education and economic growth.
Springer Nature is among many publishers around the globe who are signatories of the SDG Publishers Compact, which launched in 2020 in collaboration with the International Publishers Association. The compact commits publishers to accelerate progress to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
The Springer Nature effort, though, stands out for its scope and ambition. Nearly 400,000 articles and chapters on SDG-related topics have been published since 2015.
“In 2015 when the SDGs were formally adopted, we realized the challenges that they set out to address, are things that need to be informed by high-quality academic research that can be trusted. As a publisher of that kind of research, we realized we had quite an important role to play,” Nicola Jones, head of publishing for the Springer Nature SDG program, tells CCC’s Chris Kenneally.
The merger of Macmillan Science and Education with Springer Science and Business Media, which created Springer Nature, also occurred in 2015, Jones notes.
“We saw the SDGs as a way to try to bring colleagues together across this brand-new, very large organization to help make a difference in the real world – something people could really get enthusiastic and excited about and to realize how they were making a difference.”
