For research integrity, Springer Nature which has been advancing discovery for over 180 years by helping the global research community and publishing their research papers, is investing heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to ensure originality, a top executive said.
“AI for us is a big opportunity. We are making big investments in AI, because we believe it helps to improve the publishing process in terms of protecting integrity, because we can see whether images are manipulated or not,” said Frank Vrancken Peeters, CEO, Springer Nature & Member of the Management Board in an interview.
“We are using AI a lot. About a third of the investments we are making in AI is actually focused on research and technology,” he said.
“AI helps us to find editors and reviewers. It helps to make the life of editors and reviewers easier. We are very clear that AI has to be used ethically,” he added.
India is the company’s largest location with 20% of it’s employees based here. The company is planning to increase the head count here. “We have been increasing our headcount. We will increase our headcount,” he said.
“We have been growing quite a lot in terms of people. And I expect that to continue to happen. Because for us, India and China are important,” he emphasized.
He said despite the geo-political tensions and trade barriers by way of tariffs, investments in research and development are growing, which means there’s more researchers, which means there’s more research papers.
“As a result, I would say we’re a pretty resilient business in general.” he added.
Stating that the company has done better than the market, he said it has been able to capture market share as a result of the reputation of its journals.
“And on top of that, we have made a lot of investments in technology to support the publication process, but also investments in launching new journals,” he said.
“We have made investments in launching collections. And we have also expanded our footprint in Asia, because that first is, of course, the important growth market, China and India,” he added.
We are really focused on is getting more reviewers and editors from India as well.
The company has rolled out the 3rd edition of its India Research Tour wherein its officials visit universities to familiarise aspiring researchers with high quality research.
The India Research Tour 2025 was launched on October 6, 2025 with in association with Ministry of Education at ICSSR, Delhi. The tour will cover 29 institutions across 7 states, concluding at Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar and touch base with 5,000 researchers.
The focus is on integrity, inclusivity, and innovation; bringing access, training, and awareness to institutions across Eastern and North-Eastern India.
“It’s a great initiative. You cannot make it more pragmatic than a person visiting a university. We have Springer Nature Ambassador Program, which essentially works with young researchers at universities to help them,” Mr Peeters said.
“There’s a lot of concerns around research integrity. So how can they find the right path, what is allowed, what is not allowed, what are credible journals, what are not.” he added.
Answering a question on the current trend in research he said a lot of research was happening in applied science which is followed by life sciences.
“And then there are very specific areas like AI, computer science. Social science has actually also grown in the last two or three years. In India it is more social sciences than China,” he said.
Published – October 16, 2025 08:15 am IST
