Outlet profile

Nature

British, science-establishment; editorially aligned with mainstream scientific consensus

Owned byNature Portfolio, an imprint of Springer Nature, which is majority-controlled by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, a German family-owned media company based in Stuttgart

FundingInstitutional and individual subscriptions, plus article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors for open-access publication; Springer Nature is a publicly listed commercial publisher (Frankfurt Stock Exchange, listed 2024) with roughly €1.85 billion in annual revenue

On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

Nature was founded on November 4, 1869, in London by publisher Alexander Macmillan and astronomer Norman Lockyer, who became its first editor. Lockyer designed the journal to serve both working scientists and the educated public, and the early editorial circle overlapped heavily with the X Club, a network of Victorian scientists who promoted scientific naturalism and used the journal as a platform. Over 150 years it grew into arguably the most prestigious peer-reviewed journal in the world, publishing landmark work including Watson and Crick's 1953 double-helix paper. It remained within Macmillan Publishers, a long-standing subsidiary of the German Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, for most of its modern history. In 2015, Holtzbrinck merged the Nature Publishing Group with Springer Science+Business Media — then co-owned by private equity firm BC Partners — to create Springer Nature. Springer Nature went public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2024, and in July 2026 German antitrust regulators approved Holtzbrinck's acquisition of full control by buying out BC Partners' remaining stake. Nature funds itself through a dual model of institutional subscriptions and high article processing charges (up to roughly $12,850 per paper for gold open access), with open-access articles crossing 50% of primary research output by 2024. Editorially, Nature has long taken clear positions on scientific consensus issues such as climate change and public health; since 2025 it has run extensive, critically framed coverage of the Trump administration's proposed 35% cuts to non-defense R&D, termination of more than 100 federal science advisory committees, and the departure of over 25,000 workers from U.S. science agencies.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-08-15; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

← Back to track record