Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has launched the first phase of its Manuscript Deposition Service. The free service is expected to help authors meet funder and institutional mandates for public access.
The NPG Manuscript Deposition Service is now available to authors publishing original research articles in Nature and the Nature research journals. The service will deposit authors' accepted manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). It is open to authors whose funders have an agreement with PMC or UKPMC to deal with authors' manuscripts from publishers. PubMed Central will accept manuscripts deposited by NPG where the author is funded by or employed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). UK PubMed Central has agreed to accept deposits from NPG from authors funded by any of its Funders Group. This includes Arthritis Research Campaign, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Chief Scientist Office (Scotland), Department of Health, Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.
Authors will be able to opt-in to the service as part of the online submission process. They will be asked to complete a simple web form to select a funder from a list and provide further information needed by PMC and UKPMC. On acceptance, NPG will deposit the accepted version of the author's manuscript, setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. PMC or UKPMC will then ask the author to confirm the deposition and check the manuscript. Six months later it will be freely accessible, meeting the open access or public access policies of all of the participating funders and making it simple and free for researchers to comply. There will be no charge to authors or funders for this service.
NPG expects to be able to announce the availability of the service for many of its society and academic journals, and for the clinical research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine, in the near future. The publisher is the first commercial subscription publisher to announce a commitment to deposit in institutional repositories, and is currently in the early stages of the institutional repositories phase of this project.
