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Nature Communications goes blogging

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Nature Communications, an innovative online science journal covering all areas of the physical, chemical and biological sciences, will be launching in Spring 2010. The journal is open for submissions of manuscripts in these disciplines. For researchers keen to learn more about this new journal, Dr Lesley Anson, the chief editor of Nature Communications, has been interviewed by science blogger Dr Martin Fenner at Nature Network. A brief taste of the interview:

Can you describe Nature Communications for me?

The published research will be of the quality associated with Nature-branded journals, but won’t necessarily have the high impact or broad appeal of papers published in Nature and the Nature research journals. In other words, we expect that papers published in Nature Communications will be of interest and importance to specialists within each field. All research papers will be in Article format, regardless of their length, and will undergo rigorous, yet efficient, peer review and be published rapidly online. Authors of primary research papers can choose to make their published article available via subscribed access, or open access through the payment of a publication fee. Nature Communications will also publish occasional Reviews and Editorials.

What will you be doing differently from other Nature journals?

Like other Nature-branded journals, Nature Communications has an independent team of editors who are responsible for maintaining the quality of the published research through rigorous peer review. However, Nature Communications has streamlined the editorial process – by limiting presubmission enquiries, appeals and the number of rounds of review – in order to secure rapid decisions for authors. Another distinctive feature of Nature Communications is its Editorial Advisory Panel – to be announced shortly – which will consist of recognized experts from all areas of science. Their collective expertise will support the editorial team in ensuring that every field is represented in the journal.

For more information of relevance to researchers interested in publishing in, and reading, the new journal, please see the full interview. Another science blogger, chemist Dr Cameron Neylon, has also written about Nature Communications, this time in an interview with Grace Baynes of the NPG communications team. The interview is posted on Dr Neylon’s blog, Science in the Open. This interview begins by focusing on the publishing model of the journal, which is a hybrid of the subscription model used by many journals, and the newer model in which the author pays a publication fee to allow free readership of the article. It then goes on to discuss speed, quality and the fees charged either to publish in or to subscribe to the new journal. A sample question and answer:

In five years time what are the possible outcomes that would be seen at NPG as the journal being a success? What might a failure look like?

We would like to see Nature Communications publish high quality manuscripts covering all of the natural sciences and work to serve the research community. The rationale for launching this title is to ensure NPG continues to serve the community with new publishing opportunities. A successful outcome would be a journal with an excellent reputation for quality and service, a good impact factor, a substantial archive of published papers that span the entire editorial scope and significant market share.

See the full interview at Science in the Open blog.

Nature Communications guide to authors.

Nature Communications guide to peer-reviewers.

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