Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, now offers authors a wider choice of journals using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. NPG and its publishing partners have introduced the CC-BY license option on twenty-two further journals, including Nature Communications. Of the 61 NPG journals that are open access or have open access options, 42 now offer the choice of CC-BY as one of the options.
The Wellcome Trust and RCUK revised public access policies came into effect on April 1, 2013. These funders will require a CC-BY license when their funds are used to pay open access article processing charges.
Nature Communications will offer CC-BY licenses at an APC of $5200, for authors submitting manuscripts on or after April 1. Two non-commercial CC license options remain available, and the APC for these has been reduced to $4800, from the current APC of $5000.
Twenty-one of the journals introducing a CC-BY option are published by NPG on behalf of publishing partners and either offer open access options, or are open access journals. They join Scientific Reports and the 19 NPG-owned academic journals that introduced CC-BY in 2012.
The partner journals that have introduced the CC-BY licence are: BoneKEy Reports, The ISME Journal, Emerging Microbes & Infections, European Journal of Human Genetics, Eye, Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, Cell Death and Differentiation, Cell Death and Disease, Cell Research, Genetics in Medicine, Heredity, Laboratory Investigation, Modern Pathology, Molecular Therapy, Molecular Therapy — Nucleic Acids, Light: Science & Applications, Spinal Cord, The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports, Molecular Systems Biology and the British Dental Journal.
The CC BY license will be available to authors choosing open access publication options in these journals, in addition to the two non-commercial Creative Commons (CC) licenses currently on offer.
In addition, The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports and Molecular Systems Biology have adopted CC0 waiver for the release of published datasets and figure source data. CC0 allows unrestricted re-use of research data. Data available on nature.com's linked data platform is also available under CC0.
Other NPG publishing partners are also considering introducing CC-BY in due course.
The CC BY license allows for articles to be distributed and amended, including for commercial opportunities. Papers can be developed upon, as long as attribution is given to the original work and its authors. An APC is levied per article accepted for publication for authors choosing to make their work open access.
