Nature to launch OA journal

Written byBob Grant

| 2 min read

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is adding an online-only, open-access publication to its roster of scientific journals, the publishing juggernaut announced today (September 23). __Nature Communications__ is set to launch in April 2010, and the hybrid open-access publication will be the first online-only title in __Nature__'s family of journals. Authors will have the choice of submitting research articles to __Nature Communications__ via the traditional subscription route, or by paying an article processing charge -- the amount of which the publisher will disclose in mid-October -- to have their paper published as an open access work that can be licensed under a Creative Commons license. In a comment emailed to __The Scientist__, Steven Inchcoombe, NPG's managing director, cited increasing support for open access from research funders as a key driver for the endeavor. "Few could have anticipated the scale of upheaval in the global economy over the past twelve months," Inchcoombe wrote. "At the same time, scholarly publishing is on the cusp of yet more radical change with increasing commitment by research funders to cover the costs of open access making experimentation with new business models more viable." A statement released by NPG concerning the launch of __Nature Communications__ contains a rather puzzling passage: The journal will publish articles across the scientific spectrum from biological and physical sciences to chemistry, the statement reads, which "will be of the highest quality, without necessarily having the scientific reach of papers published in __Nature__ and the __Nature__ research journals." Ruth Francis, NPG spokesperson, told __The Scientist__ that this means __Nature Communications__ will feature research that is more focused and less generally applicable than work that typically appears in __Nature__, and the new journal will publish papers from "fields that aren't covered by the [__Nature__] research journals." Francis added that authors submitting manuscripts to __Nature Communications__ should expect at least a 28-day wait from acceptance to publication, and that papers appearing in the journal will be constrained to 11 PDF pages or about 3,500 words, plus supplemental information. __Nature__ has made some forays into open access in the past couple years, with a policy that makes papers announcing organismal genome sequences open-access and a move to deposit papers in PubMed Central six months after their publication on behalf of authors. According to NPG's linkurl:annual letter to customers,;http://www.nature.com/press_releases/npgletter.html which was sent out last week, the publisher is set to roll out more open access titles in 2010. "We plan to introduce several open access journals in our academic and society journal program in 2010, the first of which will be __Cell Death & Disease__ in January," Inchcoombe wrote in the letter. __Editor's Note (09/23/09): The original version of this story indicated that manuscripts submitted to __Nature Communications__ would take 28 days from the time of submission to be published. In fact, papers will take at least 28 days from when they are accepted by journal editors to be published. __The Scientist__ regrets the error.__
**__Related stories:__***linkurl:Online access = more citations;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/55437/
[19th February 2009]*linkurl:Nature to aid open access;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/54823/
[8th July 2008]*linkurl:Open access for Nature genome papers;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/53977/
[7th December 2007]

Meet the Author

Bob Grant

From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.

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