We would like to clarify NPG’s support for open access, and our position of the moral rights of authors, following some concerns raised by Kevin Smith, Duke University’s Scholarly Communications Officer.
We take seriously our responsibility towards the integrity of the scientific record. The “moral rights” language included in our license to publish is there to ensure that the journal and its publisher are free to publish formal corrections or retractions of articles where the integrity of the scientific record may be compromised by the disagreement of authors. This is not our preferred approach to dealing with corrections and retractions, and we work with authors and institutions to try seek consensus first. The right against derogatory treatment is a key aspect of moral rights.
We always attribute articles to authors, we have clear contribution policies, see also our editorial on this issue.
We believe researchers should be credited for their work, and as a founding member of ORCID, we have implemented ORCID integration on nature.com to foster disambiguated accreditation.
NPG’s commitment to open access has been questioned, following our request that authors provide a formal waiver of Duke University’s open access policy. NPG is supportive of open access. We encourage self-archiving, and have done so since we implemented our policy in 2005:
“When a manuscript is accepted for publication in an NPG journal, authors are encouraged to submit the author’s version of the accepted paper (the unedited manuscript) to PubMedCentral or other appropriate funding body’s archive, for public release six months after publication. In addition, authors are encouraged to archive this version of the manuscript in their institution’s repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites, also six months after the original publication. “
You can find this policy here.
We are requesting waivers from Duke University authors, because of the grant of rights asserted in its open access policy: “In legal terms, each Faculty member grants to Duke University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of his or her scholarly articles, in any medium, and to authorize others to do so, provided that the articles are not sold. The Duke faculty author remains the copyright owner unless that author chooses to transfer the copyright to a publisher.”
If we do not request a waiver, the general language of this policy means that Duke University has the rights not only to archive the manuscript in Dukespace, but also to distribute and publish to the world at large the final version of a subscription article freely, in any medium, immediately on publication. We started requesting waivers recently, following an enquiry from a Duke University author.
We have worked constructively with PubMed Central and institutional repositories for many years, and do not want our intentions and commitment to academic integrity and open access to be misunderstood.
Grace Baynes
Head of Communications, Nature Publishing Group
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Thanks, for this, Grace. If nothing else, NPG’s swiftness of response is commendable.
But really, a blog-post is not the correct fix for this. If NPG supports authors’ rights to be identified as the authors of their work, then the correct thing to do is simply to remove from your publication agreement the language that strips them of this right.
If you need the right to retract articles in the case of fraud, then just say that in the agreement instead.
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[On another note, please do not pre-moderate comments on your blogs. Doing so slows things down, prevents any actual discussion from taking place, and makes it impossible to tweet a link to my comment. You already know who I am — I’m registered — and that I have a history of comments that you have judged acceptable, and I’ve correctly filled in a CAPCHA. Let the conversation flow.]
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Hi Mike
Thanks for your feedback. Just to let you know that we don’t pre moderate all comments on the editorial blogs at blogs.nature.com. We do catch the first comment from each registrant, so we can stop any incoming spam from new accounts, but once you’ve had your first comment accepted, any following comments are posted directly to the site.
Best wishes,
Jo
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Thanks, Jo. That policy is eminently sensible. But I don’t think it’s what I’m seeing: I’ve commented on Nature before, but my comments on this post were held. If this one goes straight through I’ll know that it generally works right, though!
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Confirmation: that comment went straight through. So I’m not sure what happened with my first two comments on this thread, but it’s great to see that in general the policy works as you describe.
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I understand why NPG wants the freedom to make changes under certain circumstances, but it misses the legal point. In many countries one CANNOT waive or refuse to assert Moral Rights, and in the one country where Moral Rights can be waived (UK), there are no Moral Rights in journal articles anyway. So why ask for these things at all? Surely it’s better to get authors to simply agree to negotiate with NPG should there be an issue over the content of a contribution?
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To re-iterate both Mike and my points: why alarm and upset your authors by requiring a waiver of Moral Rights when (a) Moral Rights do not apply to journal articles in USA or UK, and (b) in continental Europe Moral Rights cannot be waived? Change your wording so that should, in the reasonable opinion of NPG, a published article require retraction or amendment, the parties enter into good faith negotiations to resolve the problem, but if the problem cannot be resolved, NPG reserves the right to make the final decision.