Nature Precedings launched back in June 2007 with the support of several partner organizations, including the British Library, the EBI, Science Commons, and the Wellcome Trust. Since then it’s been an exhilarating year. Wired described Nature Precedings as an island of innovation and several editorials in Nature journals throughout the past year have discussed how Nature Precedings can enhance scientific communication (see Community service, Virtual networking for microbiologists, Free market science, and Shared genomes).
Over the past year, researchers in a variety of disciplines, including genetics, neuroscience, bioinfomatics, and ecology have posted 475 documents and 180+ comments. Thousands of readers have signed up to comment, vote, and submit documents on the site, and we’ve seen steady growth in site traffic and posted documents. The Nature Precedings group on Nature Network has become a lively place with discussions on many topics including “findability” , posting negative results on Precedings and academic search engines.
In response to suggestions from you, our users and contributors, we’ve rolled out a number of new features, including comment notifications, an OAI–PMH interface, and many usability enhancements.
To all of our visitors and supporters: Thank you! for helping turn the past year into a strong start for the project. The site relies upon your contributions for its success.
As we celebrate one year of Nature Precedings, we’ll be releasing new features on the site in the upcoming weeks and making some additional announcements. We look forward to the year ahead!
-The Nature Precedings Team