The Trump administration has ended several U.S. science agencies’ subscriptions to Springer Nature journals, including the prestigious Nature titles. The move, which will end easy access to the journals for agency staff scientists, follows recent criticisms of academic journals by administration officials who accused them of bias.
The cuts involving the for-profit, publicly traded Springer Nature—one of the world’s largest scientific publishers, producing more than 3000 journal titles— were first reported Wednesday by Axios , without detailing specific agencies affected. Government officials have given conflicting statements about whether the cut included the company’s single biggest U.S. government subscription contract, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Yesterday, Inside Higher Ed reported that NIH first said its Springer Nature subscription had not been canceled, but later the agency’s parent department, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), told the outlet they had; today, HHS provided the same statement to Science, saying “all contracts … are terminated or no longer active.” (The White House press office did not respond to Science’s request for comment.) A Science review of the USASpending.gov database shows that earlier this month the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Energy canceled Springer Nature subscriptions for which they had committed $3 million in funding this year.
The database shows that at least seven agencies had subscription contracts this year with Springer Nature as of 17 June, for which they had planned to eventually spend up to $25 million. Of that, about half was for NIH, which does not currently appear as canceled—but the database can be up to 2 weeks out of date, and its data are considered incomplete. The National Science Foundation’s subscription doesn’t appear in the database. But a spokesperson said today the agency continues to have a subscription.
In a statement, Springer Nature said, “We don’t comment on individual contracts, but across our U.S. business there is no material change to our customers or their spend, and we remain confident about the strength of the service we provide.”
The cancellations were not the first of their kind by President Donald Trump’s administration. In March, USDA told staff members it had canceled subscriptions carried by its National Agricultural Library to save on costs. The move covered nearly 400 of the library’s roughly 2000 journals, published by 15 organizations, most of them nonprofit—but no Springer Nature titles.
Meanwhile administration officials have criticized journals for their editorial policies. In April, the former interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, wrote journal editors asking them about concerns that “more and more journals … are conceding they are partisans in various scientific debates.” (A Springer Nature spokesperson, Susie Winter, declined to say whether Springer Nature received one.) And in May, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he might ban the agency’s scientists from publishing in leading peer-reviewed medical journals, calling them “corrupt” and under the influence of pharmaceutical companies.
Despite the broad focus suggested by Martin’s and Kennedy’s comments, the recent terminations of Springer Nature subscriptions appear to be the first since the agriculture library’s. The New England Journal of Medicine , which Kennedy has criticized, has not received a request from any U.S. government agency to change its subscription, a spokesperson told Science . A spokesperson for AAAS, which publishes Science , declined to comment. ( Science ’s news section is editorially independent.)
An agency may save money when it terminates a journal subscription, but efficiency suffers as researchers there must devote more time spent tracking down the articles they need from other sources, says a scientist at the agriculture department’s Agricultural Research Service. “That slows down and reduces efficiency of literature searches,” says the scientist, who asked not to be identified because they are not authorized to speak to the press. “This loss [of Springer Nature titles] adds to the distressing erosion of journal availability.”