Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is expanding open access choices for authors in 2009, through both 'green' self-archiving and 'gold' (authors-pays) open access publication routes. Eleven more 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....
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....
Site licence prices will be adjusted in line with the amount of subscription-content published annually....
These titles join The EMBO Journal, EMBO reports and British Journal of Cancer, which already offer an open access option to authors. Molecular Systems Biology, published by NPG in partnership with the European Molecular Biology Organization, is a fully open access journal.
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 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 [here].
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. NPG's policies are explained in detail [here].
Also see today's press release on the the new OA and deposit service from Molecular Therapy.
Comments
I applaud the expansion of NPG's green and gold OA options. For the NPG hybrid OA journals, I applaud the policy to reduce subscription prices in proportion to author uptake, in contrast to the majority of hybrid OA journals which still use a double-charge business model..
I have mixed feelings about NPG's self-archiving policy, and have had since 2005: thumbs up for positively encouraging self-archiving, and not merely permitting it, but thumbs down for demanding the six-month embargo.
I have another quibble which is minor by comparison but too large to let go. It's true that green OA is OA through repositories or self-archiving, but it's not true that gold OA is "author pays". Gold OA is simply OA through journals, regardless of the journal's business model. Some OA journals charge publication fees, but most do not. Even when OA journals do charge fees, it's misleading to describe them as "author pays". The more NPG expands its OA options and advertises them, the more important it is to avoid this misleading terminology.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
