NPG's annual letter to customers (2009)
Nature Publishing Group's managing director, Stephen Inchcoombe, has just written his annual letter to the company's customers. NPG's customers are varied: as well as authors and peer-reviewers, they include readers, subscribers, librarians, institutions, advertisers, suppliers, partners, sponsors, and more. The annual letter is, necessarily, broad, so I'll highlight here a few points of particular interest to authors:
--A new XML repository for nature.com and other infrastructure improvements are the foundations for NPG to deliver a new wave of applications in the coming year
--In April 2010 we will introduce Nature Communications, an online-only peer-reviewed journal offering rapid publication for high-quality research across the biological, chemical and physical sciences, with a mixed publishing model
--Nature Chemistry, launched in April 2009, showcases the kind of innovative publishing functionality we want to provide. Highlighting chemical compounds in articles, redrawing chemical structures to be machine-readable and enhanced chemical compound reference pages created by journal editors, all further the journal article's role as an integral part of the reader's workflow. These advances will be applied to Nature Chemical Biology, Nature and other NPG journals in the near future
--NPG now publishes 16 of the top 50 (32%) journals by Impact Factor, twice as many as any other scientific publisher
--Expanded content in Nature Medicine from January and significant improvements to Nature later in the year, with no commensurate price increases
--Closer integration of nature.com and Nature Network, our social network for scientists. Comments on online journal articles will become part of the commenter's Nature Network profile, acknowledging that contributions to the scientific record stretch far beyond the journal article itself
--Scientific American became part of NPG in 2009, after many years as a sister Holtzbrinck organization. Expect to see functionality, services and interlinking between Scientific American and NPG journals and resources from next year.
The whole letter is published at NPG's press website; we welcome your feedback and comments.
More information about Nature Publishing Group and its executive committee.
