« What scientists think about animal experiments | Main | Statements of competing interest »

Bookmark in Connotea

Community preprint servers

Q. Dear Editor
My collaborators and I just submitted a paper to Nature. We would like to know whether we can send the present paper on the physics arxiv web site (see for example xxx.lanl.gov) or if -- to respect Nature policy-- we should wait for the editorial decision.

A. Dear Author

Thank you for your message. It would be fine for you to send your preprint to the arxiv site, or any other recognised community preprint server. Please provide the arxiv reference number to the editor handling your paper for his/her information, though.

Our policy is here:

"Contributions submitted to, in press with or published in Nature must not be posted on any web site, except for preprints posted on recognized preprint servers (such as ArXiv) where this is community practice. The server concerned must be identified to the editor in the cover letter accompanying submission of the paper, and the content of the paper must not be advertised to the media by virtue of being on the preprint server, as explained fully in Nature."

Best wishes
Nature.


Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2006
Categories: Access, Policies, Policies Feedback | | Comments (2)

Comments

This is commendable and good for the community.

However, what happens if the paper is rejected by nature, and another has a different journal has a different policy?

If all journals don't have the same policy, this sort of submission could be risky.

Posted by: Michael Barton | December 19, 2006 05:16 PM

This is a good point. Most quality journals allow authors to publish on preprint servers in advance of submission, especially in the physical sciences. But authors would be well advised to check first on the policy of any journal to which they might submit their paper, before publishing it as a preprint.
All the Nature journals encourage community discussion of results.

Posted by: Maxine Clarke | December 19, 2006 09:28 PM

Post a comment

Comments will be reviewed by the blog editors before being published, mainly to ensure that spam and irrelevant material (such as product advertisements) are not published . Please keep your comment brief. Excessively long or offensively phrased entries will be edited. Remember this blog is for feedback and discussion of matters concerning scientific authorship or peer-review - not for drawing attention to your research.

If you want to know if a NPG journal would be interested in your research, you will need to contact the journal's editorial office, which can be done via the authors & referees website.

We strongly encourage you to use your real, full name. E-mail addresses are required in case we need to discuss your comment with you directly. We won't publish your e-mail address unless you request it.

Please enter the numbers you see below - this helps us to avoid spam. If you are having trouble with this system, you can send your comment by e-mail to 'authors at nature dot com'.

please enter code

Search