Nature Publishing Group has announced that Nature Communications will only accept open access research submissions starting October 20th 2014.
This is a big win for open access. The 2013 Impact Factor for Nature Communications is 10.742, according to the 2013 Journal Citation Reports® Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2014). When it launched in 2010 it was a hybrid journal, publishing both open access and subscription content, but they now get over 1500 submissions every month so open access is viable.
Nature Communications also now offers the CC BY 4.0 license as default, with other Creative Commons (CC) licenses available upon request. There is no price difference for the choice of CC license. APC waivers will be available for HINARI countries, and to others on a case-by-case basis.
Robert Kiley, who leads on the implementation of the Wellcome Trust’s open access policy, commented: “I am delighted that Nature Communications is to become a fully, open access journal, and one that defaults to publishing content under the CC BY license. The decision by NPG to make this journal fully OA also provides evidence that hybrid OA - in which a journal makes content available under both OA and subscription models - can be a transitional phase. We hope that this will encourage other hybrid OA journals to transition to full OA.”
Nature Publishing Group will honor author’s choice of subscription or open access publication, for those authors whose research is currently in review by the journal, and for submissions up to the 19 October 2014. This means that subscription content will continue to be published in 2015, and available to site license customers. Major funders including Wellcome, RCUK, NIH, NSF, HHMI, CAS allow funds to be used for APCs, and NPG will work with authors to help them identify funds for open access publication.
A report by the Research Information Network recently found that there is a significant benefit for article views and downloads, as well as a small but significant citation benefit to publishing open access.
Source: Nature Publishing Group
