Springer Nature developing peer review platform

Last week Springer Nature announced it has embarked on a new project to build the next generation in peer review platforms. Being designed in-house and in stages, adapting to user feedback as part of its ongoing development, it puts editors, authors and reviewers firmly at the centre. Snapp (Springer Nature’s Article Processing Platform) aims to improve the publishing process and provide a more agile response to the growth in Open Access (OA). Its rollout marks a key investment from the company in the future of publishing.

Springer Nature says 7^th December marked a milestone of the platform’s rollout having now supported over 1 million submissions, 75% of which were OA. Since initial introduction in 2019, Snapp has supported over 5.6 million authors, 55,000 editors and over half a million reviewers. Over a third of Springer Nature owned journals and nearly half of its OA journals are now live on Snapp, with the rest of its portfolio to follow.

Harsh Jegadeesan, chief publishing officer, Springer Nature commented: “Innovation has always played an important role at Springer Nature and we continue to build on our experience with technology and AI tools to better support our research community. Snapp is a key demonstration of that, and reaching the milestone of 1 million submissions is a strong indicator of the experience it is providing our community. By building a platform that puts the authors, editor and reviewer at the heart, we are not only delivering an enhanced experience suitable for the future of publishing, but we are also ensuring that we are providing the services our community needs to get high quality research published quickly and into the hands of those that can effect change on the world’s most pressing challenges.”

Using automation, AI and machine learning (ML) technologies the publisher says Snapp frees up time in the publishing process enabling authors and editors to focus on the research. It delivers:

• A single login point for all submissions, regardless of journal, and 1-click transfers ensuring authors find the right home for their papers;
• an efficient peer review process via the reviewer tool, enabling editors to quickly find the most suitable peer reviewers for each paper, and for reviewers to only be selected for relevant content for their expertise;
• a transparent publishing process where the status of a submission can be tracked in real time;
• enhanced integrity checks using AI technologies to ensure the publication of high quality research;
• an integrated way to identify relevant OA funding, entitlements and support data sharing.

Speaking of its development Jeff Stonefield VP digital and OA transformation, Springer Nature, added: “Snapp sits directly at the heart of what we do as publishers and represents the biggest technological change to our services in our 180+ year history. It has changed the way we handle articles to make submissions a more streamlined and intuitive process. It has of course not been without its challenges, and as such we continue to introduce the system in a tailored way, supporting and listening to our community. A testament to its progress has been reaching the milestone of 1 million submissions, and we are incredibly proud of the collective work that has got the platform to where it is today. But there is still more to do as we continue to be responsive to our authors, editors and reviewers' needs and develop and deliver improvements and unique features over legacy platforms.”

More on Snapp and the roadmap for its continued development can be found here and a summary of key outreach to date can be found here.