PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
30 July 2008

Contact: Grace Baynes
Corporate PR Planner, Nature Publishing Group
T:+44 (0)20 7014 4063
g.baynes@nature.com

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today launches the first phase of its Manuscript Deposition Service. The free service will help authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates for public access.

From today, the NPG Manuscript Deposition Service will be available to authors publishing original research articles in Nature and the Nature research journals. NPG expects to be able to announce the availability of the service for many of its society and academic journals, and for the clinical research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine, shortly.

NPG's Manuscript Deposition service will deposit authors’ accepted manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC). The service is open to authors whose funders have an agreement with PMC or UKPMC to deal with authors’ manuscripts from publishers. PubMed Central will accept manuscripts deposited by NPG where the author is funded by or employed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). UK PubMed Central has agreed to accept deposits from NPG from authors funded by any of its Funders Group: Arthritis Research Campaign, Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Chief Scientist Office (Scotland), Department of Health, Medical Research Council, and the Wellcome Trust.

"We are very pleased that Nature Publishing Group has made this service available at no charge to authors and funders," said Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust.

Authors will be able to opt-in to the service as part of the online submission process. If authors opt-in, they will be asked to complete a simple web form to select a funder from a list and provide further information needed by PMC and UKPMC. On acceptance, NPG will deposit the accepted version of the author's manuscript, setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. PMC or UKPMC will then ask the author to confirm the deposition and check the manuscript. Six months later it will be freely accessible, meeting the open access or public access policies of all of the participating funders and making it simple and free for researchers to comply. There will be no charge to authors or funders for this service.

NPG hopes to extend the service to other archives and repositories in the future, to help more of its authors comply with institutional and funder mandates. This will include institutional repositories. NPG is proud to be the first commercial subscription publisher to announce a commitment to deposit in institutional repositories, and is currently in the early stages of the institutional repositories phase of this project.

NPG's License to Publish encourages authors of original research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript in PubMed Central or other appropriate funding body's archive, their institution's repositories and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication. NPG does not require authors of original research articles to transfer copyright. NPG's policies are explained in detail at this web page: www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html

-ENDS-

Notes

Repositories currently included in NPG’s Manuscript Deposition Service
Participating funders
NPG journals offering Manuscript Deposition Service
NPG's License to Publish
Information page about NPG’s Manuscript Deposition Service

Previous announcements
Nature Publishing Group to archive on behalf of authors (8 July 2008)

About NPG

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities. NPG's flagship title, Nature, was first published in 1869. Other publications include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews , Nature Clinical Practice and a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. NPG also provides news content through Nature News. Scientific career information and free job postings are offered on Naturejobs.

NPG is a global company with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Madrid, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Delhi, Mexico City and Basingstoke. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.