Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has announced that it is expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both 'green' self-archiving and 'gold' (authors-pays) open access publication routes. Eleven journals published by NPG are offering an open access option from January 2009. NPG has also expanded its Manuscript Deposition Service to include 32 further titles.
An open-access option is now available to authors submitting original research to Molecular Therapy, published by NPG on behalf of the American Society of Gene Therapy, and to ten journals owned by NPG. The journals offering this option are: Cancer Gene Therapy, European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Genes and Immunity, International Journal of Impotence Research, Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, Journal of Human Hypertension, Journal of Perinatology, Molecular Psychiatry, The Pharmacogenomics Journal and Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases.
For a publication fee of £2,000 / $3000 / €
2400, articles will be open access on the journal website and identified in the online and print editions of the journal with an open-access icon. The final full text version of the article will be deposited immediately on publication in PubMed Central (PMC), and authors will be entitled to self-archive the published version immediately on publication. Open access articles will be published under a Creative Commons license. Authors may choose between the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported and the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence. The Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Licence permits derivative works, ensuring that authors can comply with funders such as the Wellcome Trust. Other articles will continue to be published under NPG's exclusive License to Publish, and its usual self-archiving policy will apply.
Editors will be blind as to whether or not authors have selected the open access option, avoiding any possibility of a conflict of interest during peer review and acceptance. Print subscription prices for these journals will not be affected. Site licence prices will be adjusted in line with the amount of subscription-content published annually.
Continuing its support for the 'green route' to open access on high-impact journals, NPG has extended its Manuscript Deposition Service. Forty-three journals published by NPG will now offer the free service to help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates for public access. In addition to Nature and the Nature research journals, 28 society and academic journals published by NPG now offer a Manuscript Deposition Service to authors of original research articles. A full list of participating journals is available online at http://www.nature.com/authors/author_services/deposition.html.
NPG's Manuscript Deposition Service will deposit authors' accepted manuscripts with PMC and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). For participating journals, the service is open to authors whose funders have an agreement with PMC or UKPMC to deal with authors' manuscripts from publishers.
NPG's License to Publish encourages authors of original research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript in PMC or other appropriate funding bodies' archive, their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the author's version of the accepted manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. NPG does not require authors of original research articles to transfer copyright.
