Nautilus

In its June 2008 issue, Nature Methods presents a free-access focus on single-molecule techniques. Biologists are becoming increasingly interested in methodologies that can examine the mechanism of action of fundamental biological processes at the molecular level. The Nature Methods focus consists of four review articles that provide practical guidance for some of the techniques that are most integral to in vitro single-molecule experiments. These cover single-molecule fluorescence methods; microfluidic flow cells to manipulate experimental conditions during experiments; and force-spectroscopy techniques such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical traps to manipulate individual molecules themselves.
From the focus's Editorial: The ability to analyse biological systems at the single-molecule level opens avenues of investigation that are not possible using techniques that measure aggregate properties of molecular populations. This new vantage point can yield important insights. A textbook example is that of molecular motors. Although classical biological assays for motor function show that these molecules support constant-velocity movement, studies of individual molecules revealed that they take discrete individual steps. The technique that allowed these crucial biological observations came from the physics field in 1986—a momentous year that saw the first demonstration not only of the optical tweezers technique used in the subsequent molecular motor study but also of the atomic force microscope. Created by physicists, these force-spectroscopy methods form much of the backbone of the field of research now devoted to studying biological systems at the single-molecule level."

Please read on at the Nature Methods focus website. Comments from readers are welcome at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 10, 2008
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Venture capital is a key part of growing a start-up company, but can be fraught with problems. Nature Biotechnology is gathering together a group of seasoned chief executives, venture capitalists and a venture lawyer at a one-day event 'Bioentrepreneur beware: CEO war stories on investor nightmares', to discuss what can go wrong during the financing process, including term-sheet negotiations that seriously dilute equity, rounds that fall through at the last second, investor activism and hostile takeover of board seats. Take the opportunity to participate in a lively panel discussion that will explore key issues when borrowing other people’s money and ways that you can ensure investor and management goals are compatible with your biotechnology business. The meeting will take place on 20 May 2008 at The Meritage Resort, Napa, California, and is free to attend. The speakers and programme, and more details, can be found here. For information and to register, please send full company name and contact details by email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 22, 2008
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Via Hilary Spencer, Nature Precedings has just introduced some new features.
Comment notifications: authors can opt to receive notification when new comments are added to their Nature Precedings document by checking a box during the submission process. Commenters can also opt to receive notification of when someone responds to their comment.
Watermarks on PDFs: the DOI (or Handle) and date of posting are now embedded in all PDFs on Nature Precedings. By embedding the identifier in the document, readers can correctly reference or cite the document, even when they have received the document via email or accessed it via a “deep-link”.
Document thumbnails serve as a memory aid and preview; they can also be embedded in blogs and webpages.
Please join the Nature Precedings group on Nature Network to receive updates and make suggestions about the site, as well as to join the conversations between Hilary, Timo Hannay and Nature Precedings users and authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 12, 2008
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Nature has introduced a web-based production tracking system for research manuscripts that have been accepted for publication, which we hope will bring many benefits for authors. In the first phase at Nature, authors are able to access a website to download the journal's edited version of the text of their accepted manuscript, so they can make their corrections and upload the revised version back into the system. Very soon afterwards, the typeset PDF, laid out and complete with figures and/or tables, can also be uploaded and checked by the authors.
According to a survey of authors who have been testing the system in the past few weeks, a substantial majority strongly agreed that the new process is easy to operate and, for those who had published in Nature before, 100 per cent found the new system easier. One author wrote: "If it will always remain this efficient and user friendly, it is an easy, professional way of taking a manuscript through the production process." Another said: "I found the responses by the Nature staff to email queries were very impressive, being both very rapid and very helpful."
The system is being further developed, already being in use in several of the Nature monthly journals. We will keep authors informed as we introduce new components.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 18, 2008
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A free poster, by Matthias P. Wymann, Thomas Rückle, Christian Rommel, Matthias Schwarz and Roger Schneiterfrom, is published this month (February) by Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology . The poster provides an overview of the protein--lipid signalling network, and how this network can be exploited pharmacologically in the study of proliferative, inflammatory and metabolic diseases. It accompanies a review article by Matthias P. Wymann and Roger Schneiter in Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology (9, 162-176; 2008), which also contains a Web Focus on Lipids.
View the poster as a high-resolution PDF.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 07, 2008
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The Nature Physics editors (Nature Physics 4, 81; 2008) want to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet. One hundred years ago, communication was relatively slow, and scientists attended conferences to find out what was going on outside their own place of work; now, we live in an environment in which there is an over-abundance of data-rich information that is a challenge to assimilate. What tools do scientists most need to communicate, share and organize information in the most meaningful, or "filtered", way? Nature Publishing Group has already created several such tools, for example Connotea, a reference management system, and Nature Network, a social website for various kinds of specialist discussion forums. The editors would like to hear from readers about the tools they would like to see developed. Please send them an email if you have suggestions you'd like to make, or drop a comment to this post.
Nature Physics February 2008 Editorial: A tangled web we weave.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 06, 2008
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Martijn J. Schuemie and Jan A. Kors (Bioinformatics doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn006 ) have created a freely available web-based application that, on the basis of a sample text, can suggest "journals and experts who have published similar articles". Their aim is to help scientists to determine which journal is most appropriate for publishing their results, and which other scientists can be called upon to review their work. The application is called Jane (for journal/author name estimator).
I inputted some sample text to Jane, and was told that the Saudi Medical Journal was my top choice. No disrespect to that journal, but I know (because I am a person and not a computer) that this journal would be inappropriate for my test sample in at least two ways.
I would not primarily recommend an automatic selector to authors trying to decide where to submit their articles. When someone is ready to submit a paper, she or he will have given talks about the work and circulated drafts for comments from others in the field. That is a good time to ask for suggestions and advice about journals in which to publish. The scientist is then well-advised to read the author guidance on a few journals' websites, to find out about editorial scope, impact factor and so on.
I think it is possibly counter-productive to use this kind of text-based comparison system on its own for making decisions about journal submission. At Nature, for example, we are looking for novel results, not something similar to what we have just published. Other journals are the same – most of them are looking for distinctive articles, not incremental repeats.
Rather than relying on computer searches to choose where to submit, I highly recommend looking at our free Author and Reviewers’ website for writing and submission advice. From there one can go straight to a great set of articles written by professional journal editors about how, where and why to submit and publish at the free science-information website SciDev.Net.
In addition, scientists can upload a draft manuscript into a community preprint server, where others in the field can comment and suggest. (Nature Precedings is one such, which provides meta-features such as alerting people in the field when new preprints have been uploaded, but many others. ArXiv is another, for the physical sciences.)
I think it will be a sad day when science journals publish “articles selected for us by computer”.
(I first read about Jane at Nature Network in a post by Graham Steel.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2008
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One of the longest, and longest-lasting, Nature Network discussions in which I have participated is called "High Impact made by famous ones", started in October 2007 by a graduate student known as "Universal research" as part of the "Ask the Nature editor" forum.
The forum, incidentally, is hosted by the editors of Nature Network, and is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals, and about careers in scientific editing, straight from the editors of these journals. You are welcome to join the group and post your questions.
Returning to the discussion thread about those "famous ones". The Nature and Nature journal editors who regularly handle manuscript submissions provide their answers to a wide range of questions, including whether being well-known or having a stellar track-record is more likely to get your mansucript sent for peer-review or published (answer: no); blinding of the peer-review process (double-blinding gets an airing, but Nature journal editors explain why they feel the system of single-blinding is best for scientists); duplicate publication (or "salami slicing" as it is often known); and independence of editors from those whose work is being considered.
This thread may not be the longest or the oldest that I have ever seen, but it is certainly among the most focused and useful for authors, and I highly recommend you read it for a unique insight into the editors' thought-processes. If you are at the start of your publishing career as a scientist, you are likely to find this forum very helpful. We welcome you there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2008
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"Arthur Kornberg was one of the greatest biochemists of the twentieth century. His career spanned more than 60 years, and such has been the impact of his work on modern biomedical science that his influence will endure for decades." So opens Nature's obituary of Arthur Kornberg, by Tania Baker, at Nature 450, 809; 2007.
Boyana Konforti, Chief Editor of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, has asked close colleagues to contribute their thoughts and recollections about Kornberg, who died last October. These reminiscences have now been compiled and published together, along with photos, as a permanent record and tribute in the pages of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Boyana writes: "In writing these remembrances of Arthur, we have all tried to capture a bit of what he was like, and what working with him meant to us, in the hope that those who knew him will have even richer memories to share and—more importantly—those who didn't know him will get a glimpse of him through our memories. To my mind it is these personal stories (and many more like them) that will be his longest-lasting legacy". The tributes can be seen here: A Tribute to Arthur Kornberg 1918-2007 (Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 15, 2 - 17; 2008). Contributors are Robert S. Fuller, Robert A. Bambara, Tania Baker, Barbara Funnell, Elmar Wahle, Michael O'Donnell, Dale Kaiser, Kirsten Skarstad, Boyana Konforti, Satoko Maki, Tsutomu Katayama, Kazuhisa Sekimizu, Joel H. Weiner, Ronald W. Davis, Lee Rowen, Myron F. Goodman, James Spudich, Suzanne Pfeffer, Charles C. Richardson, Piotr Polaczek, RIch Calendar, Richard Kolodner, Jack Griffith, Bruce Stillman, Paul Modrich, Charles Brenner and Charley Yanofsky.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 14, 2008
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The historic moments in modern science reported in Nature can now be explored online. The archive of the first 80 years (1869-1949) of the journal Nature, the world's foremost weekly scientific journal, is now live. Every article published in Nature, back to volume 1, issue 1 is now available online.
Nature’ s archive reveals a wealth of treasures from the first years of the journal, including the first observation of X-rays (Wilhelm Röntgen, 1896), the discovery of the electron (J.J. Thomson, 1897), the first fossil evidence that humans originated in Africa (Raymond Dart, 1925), and the discovery of the neutron (James Chadwick, 1932).
Containing more than 4,000 issues and an estimated 180,000 articles, the 1869-1949 archive completes the digitization of Nature. The project has taken 5 years to complete, beginning with the launch of the 1987-1996 archive in 2003. There is a special web feature, The history of the journal Nature, featuring timelines, video interviews and profiles of all Nature 's (surprisingly few) Editors since the journal was founded.
In places, Nature’s early archive reads like science fiction, with its foretelling of science and technology we take for granted today. The forensic use of fingerprints in solving crime was suggested as early as 1880: "When bloody finger-marks or impressions on clay, glass &c., exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals." Scotland Yard introduced fingerprint identification in 1901, based on an 1892 book by Francis Galton. Motion-capture photograph pioneer Edward Muybridge suggested the development of the ‘photo finish’ in Nature in 1880. Lamenting the 'dead heat' in horse racing, he asked why officials would not "avail themselves of the same resources of science" and employ up to 20 cameras to decide the rightful outcome of races. It would be more than 50 years before the ‘photo finish’ became widely used in sport.
Articles in the Nature archive 1869-1949 are available as PDFs of the original journal article, with HTML abstracts. Access is by site license for institutions, or articles can be purchased individually.
A selection of Nature’s "greatest hits", including the article by Dart, and Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper that deciphers the structure of DNA, are featured in A century of Nature, some of which is free for a limited time.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 08, 2008
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Bali has not been the only island that has just hosted a climate-change conference. The BBC World Service's Digital Planet today runs a short feature and podcast about Nature Publishing Group's Second Nature, an archipelago of islands in Second Life, in which climate scientists – or their representational avatars – have been hosting talks and discussions. Timo Hannay, publishing director at Nature Publishing Group, describes how we went about achieving this series of virtual talks in a podcast which is available for one week only (until Tuesday 25 December) via the Digital Planet site.
Full reports of the Second Nature conference are at Joanna Scott's Nature Network blog. A brief description of the virtual conference's aims is here, with full presentations, Q/As and slides of the first two talks, by Tara LaForce of Imperial College London and Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College London.
You can follow our coverage of the real UN climate change conference at Climate Feedback blog -- just keep scrolling, there are many excellent posts from Olive Heffernan, Editor of Nature Reports Climate Change, who was in Bali for the duration.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2007
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Nature is holding a series of events on Second Life to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, from 3 to 14 December. Second Nature is hosting talks by a range of speakers including Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Climate Change Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change ; Dr Tara LaForce, Imperial College on her research on carbon capture and storage; Professor Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College London; and George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and author of the book Heat: How to stop the planet burning. All events are free, open to all, and will be held on our flagship Second Nature island: further details are available from Joanna Scott's Second Life blog on Nature Network.
Nature's archipelago of three virtual islands in Second Life, dubbed Second Nature, was established in November 2006. The islands are now covered in exhibits from scientists who have borrowed land on Second Nature to trial virtual collaboration. NPG is now focusing Second Life as a venue for events, and has been hosting a series of weekly talks since September 2007 -- see this round-up of previous Nautilus posts for some examples. Further events are planned for 2008, and will be announced on Joanna's blog on Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 04, 2007
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Michael Kenward starts a debate in Nature Network's science writers' group called Science experiments in accessibility, in which he highlights the journal Science's trial project of starting each Research Article with a one-page author's summary. Michael sees two benefits for science writers: one, to help authors to produce accessible summaries; and another to use the summaries to write more easily and confidently about the research.
Following this post is an online discusssion about the benefits to the reader of different types of summary which you may find stimulating, and to which you are welcome to contribute, or comment here. Typical summaries provided by journals range from News and Views-style editorials (articles by independent scientists in the field about a new finding), to short author summaries, to "making the paper" (interviews with an author featured on Nature's author page in the journal every week), to "inside the paper" (editors' accounts of how the paper evolved from submission to acceptance during the peer-review process) to one-paragraph editors' summaries, to science journalism, to blog posts, to podcasts. What kind of reader finds what kind of summary most useful? Would authors welcome the additional task of writing one-page summaries?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 21, 2007
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Ai Lin Chun of Nature Nanotechnology describes how to join Nature Network and one of its many groups:
1) Complete your profile (include a picture)*
2) Participate in the forum (post topics/replies; ask questions)
3) Read the notice board
4) Post your newest publications to the group profile for increased visibility
5) Set your account to receive at least one email per week to keep up to date on latest events/postings

*For examples of a Network profile, here is Ai Lin's (click on her name), and here is mine.
There is a huge variety of groups to join, including in every discipline of science, or arts/culture, or science/society, or general science-related: here is a listing. Select groups to suit your own interests and interact with like-minded scientists and other users. It's simple to do, and all free.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 19, 2007
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The Importance of Patents to Scientists is the title of today's talk at Second Nature island in Second Life. Sue Scott, a patent attorney, will talk about patents in science, why they exist and are controversial, explain the basic things all scientists need to know about patents, and attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions. Please see this Nascent posting for more details: Jo Scott writes that "Voice will be used, so if you need any help setting up, come along a few minutes early."
Date: Monday 5 November
Time: 11am SLT/PDT, 7pm GMT
Location: Second Nature Island
Contact: Joanna Wombat

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 05, 2007
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Are you interested in finding out more about research in Mainland China and Hong Kong? Take a look at Nature China. Every week, the editors of Nature China survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from mainland China and Hong Kong, and provide a summary of the results.

Divided into subject areas, this portal allows you to stay up-to-date with the latest research appearing in various scientific publications in this region. Taking materials science as an example, here some recent highlights posted on Nature China:

• Carbon nanotubes: Becoming a brighter fighter
• Drug delivery: Wet or dry
• Magnetic nanoparticles: Artificial enzymes
• Super-hard conductors: Electric diamonds

Other subject areas are: biotechnology; cell and molecular biology; chemistry; clinical medicine; developmental biology; Earth and environment; ecology and evolution; genetics; neuroscience; space and astronomy; and physics. You can register for Nature China e-alerts at the website, and stay abreast of the latest research in your field from mainland China and Hong Kong. Help us identify the best Chinese papers by using the recommended paper section of the website. Click here to recommend a paper and find out what papers other users have recommended.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 26, 2007
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The Council of Science Editors has organized journals around the globe to participate in its 2007 Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development. Hundreds of journals are publishing articles related to the scientific and medical issues that surround this theme. The Nature journals are pleased to contribute the content highlighted on this page, all of which is free. We have also created a supporting archive comprising previously published content from the Nature Publishing Group that is relevant to this theme.
See here for the nature.com Poverty and Human Development index page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 25, 2007
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For those interested in specific groups of organisms, we have arranged the large-scale biology papers published at Nature Publishing Group into a "Tree of Life" organization at the Omics Gateway, so that you can browse among the organisms. Papers that focus on a single species can be found in the most exclusive organism page that includes that species: for example papers on humans will appear on the human page rather than the primates or mammals page. Papers that focus on, or are relevant to, multiple species can be found in the set of pages that encompass those species: for example a paper that compares the dog genome with the human genome will appear on both the human and mammal pages. Categories listed on the gateway and in the picture include animals; archaea; arthropods; bacteria; chordates; eukaryotes; firmicutes; fungi; green plants; human; mammals; metagenomics (genomics of microbial communities); nematodes; primates; proteobacteria; rodents and viruses.
As well as browsing organisms, you can also browse subjects at the Omics Gateway. Why "omics"? It is a suffix that has been added to many fields to denote studies undertaken on a large or genome-wide scale. While not everyone agrees with this change of terms, it is a short and inclusive term to use to help point you to our published papers in the area. For example although we may not yet be able to precisely define the metabolome, we can all appreciate that studies in this area should yield novel insight into the processes that drive cellular metabolism and detailed interactions between them. Papers here come from publications throughout Nature Publishing Group in one or more of the subject areas of: cancer genomics; chemical genomics; comparative, evolutionary and population genomics; epigenomics; genetics of gene expression; genome sequence and analysis; glycomics; metabolomics/nomics; pharmacogenomics; proteomics; systems biology; techniques and methods; and transcriptomics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2007
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Nature is now able to accept Word 2007 files, provided that they are authored from the beginning in "Compatibility Mode", that is, as a Word 97-2003 document and saved in .doc format. We cannot accept files in .docx format, so please do not write the paper as a Word 2007 document then save as a Word 97-2003 document. The resaons for the earlier compatibility problems with Word 2007 experienced by publishers, and the efforts made by them, their suppliers of production technologies, and Microsoft, to resolve these, are discussed in this earlier Nautilus post.
The details of how to format a submission in Word 2007 are described in Nature's Guide to Authors:
Using Word 2007 to produce a Nature paper
Open a new document.
Turn on ‘Compatibility Mode’: click the Microsoft Office button, Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.
Note that some features of Word 2007 will now be inactive, including the default equation editor. See this Microsoft page for details.
Copy and paste the Word 2003 template (available at the Nature website) into the open document, and write the paper.
NB To put in equations, use Insert/Object/Microsoft Equation 3.0.
To put in symbols such as Greek letters, use Insert/Symbol; we recommend using Symbol font.
Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 03, 2007
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Nature Clinical Practice (NCP), the medical publishing arm of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), has announced that NCP Cardiovascular Medicine will accept clinical and translational original research, starting this month (September 2007). The journal is consdiering submissions of original research papers in the areas of randomized, controlled trials; systematic reviews/meta-analyses; observational studies; epidemiological studies; and translational studies -- as well as timely and succinct analysis of recent advances. The journal's online submission site for original reserach papers is here; or you can email the journal for further information.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 20, 2007
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Nature Methods' September Editorial, A 'rough guide' to publication (Nature Methods 4, 675; 2007) describes the process of submitting or resubmitting a manuscript—some important steps and decisions along the way.

The path to publication is a well-beaten one for some scientists but seems more like a dark, unmarked road to others. It helps to know what to expect from peer review (see our May 2006 editorial), but a number of other procedural steps often cause disorientation as well. Here are some trail blazes and travel advice.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group and The New York Academy of Sciences announce the second Nature Chemical Biology Symposium: Chemical Neurobiology, on February 22-23, 2008 at The New York Academy of Sciences. (See here for location and accommodation details.) The 2008 symposium will explore how chemists and biologists are using the tools and philosophy of chemical biology to understand the molecular basis of neuronal function. The two-day meeting will comprise a series of four scientific sessions that look at distinct molecular functions of a neuron (chemical sensing, synapses and signalling, synthetic neurobiology and brain matters) and will conclude with a keynote session featuring Linda Buck, a pioneer in the field of neuroscience.
The meeting organisers are Terry Sheppard, Chief Editor of Nature Chemical Biology, together with his colleagues Joanne Kotz, Mirella Bucci and Catherine Goodman, as well as Stacie Bloom of the New York Academy of Sciences. See here for registration details.
See here for more about Nature Conferences.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 03, 2007
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The Journal of Investigative Dermatology now has a journal club group on Nature Network, a place to read, discuss, and learn more about cutting-edge research in cutaneous biology. Anyone can join Nature Network simply by registering for an account. It is all free, and once you've joined, you can join the Journal of Investigative Dermatology's or any other group from the large range that have been set up by users. You can also participate in the forum discussions or set up your own blog on the Nature Network -- the place for scientists to meet, communicate and socialise.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 20, 2007
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The articles that have been downloaded most often, in PDF format, from the Nature website in July, are listed below and can be accessed online from this page. The chart does not rank the quality, scientific significance or citation impact of the content. However, it may bring articles to your attention that you might not have otherwise noticed. We hope you enjoy them.

Continue reading "Nature's July top ten PDF downloads" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2007
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For advice about how to get your stem cell paper in Nature, senior editor Natalie DeWitt, will answer your questions about how the editorial process works, common misconceptions and other topics in the stem-cell field. Please send Natalie an email containing your question.

Highlights from this month's Nature Reports Stem Cells include:

California stem-cell research: assessing return on investment
Read our commentary by Stanford researcher Michael T. Longaker that explores how Californians can figure out whether its landmark, debt-funded investment in stem-cell research will pay off.
Why are recipients of California stem-cell grants using lines that are eligible for federal funding?
A Nature Reports Stem Cell survey of researchers examines the grants designed to bring new researchers into the stem-cell field.
Bureaucracy blocks work on embryonic stem cells in Japan
Kyoto University's Norio Nakatsuji argues that irrational regulations stifle research in his country.
What experiments should be legal on animal-human chimaeras?
With new legislation covering the use of animal-human chimeras in the works in the United Kingdom, Nature Reports Stem Cells summarizes the report from the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.
Embryonic stem cells for drug discovery
In Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, experts from Monash University describe the advances needed to make assays feasible.
Also read about a survey finding that most fertility patients would donate left-over embryos for stem-cell research and the latest news and views on engineered pluripotent stem cells from Nature.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2007
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In a post entitled Copy-Editing and Citation-Linking , Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network compares the version of an article finalised by the author, and the version edited by the journal. An extract is provided here:

"Two recent articles in Learned Publishing, the journal published by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), have highlighted the issue. The first, by Wates and Campbell, looked at the changes made in copy-editing in articles published in a series of Blackwell journals. The second, by Goodman, Dowson and Yaremchuk, is in the current issue of Learned Publishing, but also, interestingly, through the University of Arizona’s repository. I have not tried to compare the two versions. It would be interesting to do so, not least because they found that as a result of publishers’ copy-editing “there were a number of differences between author-final and published versions that were ‘confusing’ and that sometimes the publisher version and sometimes the author version was the more confusing”.......
In an editorial ....Sally Morris also comments on the two articles, and lays considerable stress on the value that the publisher adds in the checking and formatting of references and the provision of citation linking via CrossRef..... the need to add DOI links is a relatively new one which I gather relatively few authors actually do themselves (and I was not guided so to do by the publishers of either of my recent articles)."
See here for the full article.
We would be interested to hear further feedback from authors about the editing and web services they received from Nature journals and NPG journals, to add to the regular "author experience" surveys we conduct.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 19, 2007
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