NPG will archive for authors
Nature Publishing Group announced this week that it will provide a free service to help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates for the archiving of primary research papers. NPG has encouraged self-archiving since 2005. The new arrangements will provide uploading for NPG authors, starting later this year. See here for NPG's press release announcing the service.
NPG will begin depositing authors’ accepted manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC), meeting the requirements for authors funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council and a number of other major funders in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada that mandate deposition in either PMC or UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the service to other archives and repositories in future.
"We are announcing our intention early in the process to solicit feedback from the community and to reassure authors that we will be providing this service," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of NPG. "We believe this is a valuable service to authors, reducing their workload and making it simple and free to comply with mandates from their institution or funder."
Initially, the service will be open to authors publishing original research articles in Nature, the Nature monthly journals that publish original research, and the clinical research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine. NPG will then extend the service to society and academic journals in its portfolio that wish to participate.
For eligible authors who opt-in during the submission process, NPG will deposit the accepted version of the author’s manuscript on acceptance, setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. There will be no charge to authors or funders for the service.
In 2005, NPG announced a self-archiving policy that encourages authors of research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript to PubMed Central or other appropriate funding body's archive, their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. NPG’s policies are explained at our author and referees' website.
