Self archiving and license to publish

Publishing licences and compliance with open access mandates.

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Nature Portfolio author licence policy

This policy applies to all journals published by Nature Portfolio, including Nature and the journals with "Nature" in their titles. Nature Portfolio's policies are compatible with the vast majority of funders' open access and self-archiving policies.

Nature Portfolio does not require authors of original (primary) research papers to assign the copyright of their published contributions. Authors grant Nature Portfolio an exclusive licence to publish, in return for which they can reuse their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission from the publisher of the journal.

For non-primary articles (including articles such as Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views), copyright is retained by Springer Nature. This includes, but is not restricted to, commissioned content and all content published in the Nature Reviews journals. 

General information about licencing policies and re-use can be found at the reprint and permission website.

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Creative commons licences

Nature Portfolio open access and hybrid journals

Open access articles in Nature Portfolio Journals are published under a CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License). Under Creative Commons, authors retain copyright in their articles. The CC BY license is the most open licence available and considered the industry 'gold standard' for open access. It allows for maximum dissemination and re-use of open access materials and is preferred by many research funding bodies. Under this license, users are free to share (copy, distribute and transmit) and remix (adapt) the contribution including for commercial purposes, providing they attribute the contribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor (read full legal code). All Springer Nature journals with an open access option offer intergovernmental organisation (IGO) versions of Creative Commons licences on request, where required by the author’s employer.

Authors are advised to check their funder's open access requirements, to ensure compliance. For more information about open access licensing, please see "OA licensing and copyright" on our journal open access policies page on SpringerNature.com.

The Nature Portfolio hybrid journals are Transformative Journals and offer a gold open access option. Please see our external announcement here.

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Self-archiving policy

Nature Portfolio's policies are compatible with the vast majority of funders' open access and self-archiving mandates.

Preprints

Nature Portfolio journals encourage posting of preprints of primary research manuscripts on preprint servers of the authors’ choice, authors’ or institutional websites, and open communications between researchers whether on community preprint servers or preprint commenting platforms.

Preprints are defined as an author’s version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server (as described in Preprints for the life sciences. Science 352, 899–901; 2016); preprints may be posted at any time during the peer review process. Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardize consideration at Nature Portfolio journals. Manuscripts posted on preprint servers will not be taken into account when determining the advance provided by a study under consideration at a Nature Portfolio journal.

Springer Nature has partnered with Research Square ( Springer Nature has a majority interest in Research Square) to provide In Review, a journal-integrated solution for preprint sharing, supporting authors across all the communities we serve to share their research early. Authors submitting to some Springer Nature journals are also able to publicly share information regarding their peer review through In Review. More information about application of In Review to Nature journals can be found here; general information about In Review at Springer Nature and the Research Square preprint platform can be found here  and here .

Our policy on posting, licensing, citation of preprints and communications with the media about preprints of primary research manuscripts is summarized below.

Authors should disclose details of preprint posting, including DOI and licensing terms, upon submission of the manuscript or at any other point during consideration at a Nature Portfolio journal. Once the preprint is published, it is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.

Authors may choose any license of their choice for the preprint including Creative Commons licenses. The type of CC-license chosen will affect how the preprint may be shared and reused. More information to help guide licensing choices can be found in these resource documents developed by an ASAPbio licensing taskforce.

Preprints may be cited in the reference list of articles under consideration at Nature Portfolio journals as shown below:

Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

Authors posting preprints are asked to respect our policy on communications with the media. Researchers may respond to requests from the media in response to a preprint or conference presentation by providing explanation or clarification of the work, or information about its context. In these circumstances, media coverage will not hinder editorial handling of the submission. Researchers should be aware however that such coverage may reduce or pre-empt coverage by other media at the time of publication. We also advise that researchers approached by reporters in response to a preprint make it clear that the paper has not yet undergone peer review, that the findings are provisional and that the conclusions may change.  More information to help guide responsible communication of research reported in preprints can be found in these resource documents developed by the ASAPbio Preprints in the Public Eye project.

Information about our self-archiving policies and release of Author’s Accepted Manuscript may be found here.

Self-archiving of papers published via the subscription route

When an article is accepted for publication in a Nature Portfolio journal via the subscription route, authors are permitted to self-archive the accepted manuscript on their own personal website and/or in their funder or institutional repositories, for public release six months after publication. Authors should cite the publication reference and DOI number on the first page of any deposited version, and provide a link from it to the URL of the published article on the journal's website.

Where journals publish content online ahead of publication in a print issue (known as advanced online publication, or AOP), authors may make the archived version openly available six months after online publication (AOP).

Please note that the accepted manuscript may not be released under a Creative Commons license. Further information and guidance on self-archiving of articles published via the subscription route can be found on our open access policies for journals page. For Springer Nature's accepted manuscript terms of use, please see: https://www.nature.com/nature-research/editorial-policies/self-archiving-and-license-to-publish#terms-for-use.

Self-archiving of papers published open access

For open access content published under a Creative Commons licence, authors are encouraged to deposit the published version immediately on publication, alongside a link to the URL of the published article on the journal's website.

In all cases, the requirement to link to the journal's website is designed to protect the integrity and authenticity of the scientific record, with the online published version on nature.com clearly identified as the definitive version of record.

Manuscript deposition service

To help authors fulfil a number of funder and institutional mandates, Nature Portfolio deposits manuscripts of original research papers in PubMed Central and Europe PubMed Central on behalf of authors who opt-in to this free service during submission. (This service does not apply to Reviews or Protocols.) Only authors whose funders are listed in the number of participating funders on our website may use this service. 

More information on the Nature Portfolio's Manuscript Deposition Service is available. To take advantage of this service, the corresponding author must opt-in during the manuscript submission process. Corresponding authors should be mindful of all co-authors’ self-archiving requirements.

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Springer Nature terms for use of archived accepted manuscripts of subscription articles

For articles published within the Springer Nature group of companies that have been archived into academic repositories such as institutional repositories, PubMed Central and its mirror sites, where a Springer Nature company holds copyright, or an exclusive license to publish, users may view, print, copy, download and text and data-mine the content, for the purposes of academic research, subject always to the full conditions of use. Any further use is subject to permission from Springer Nature. The conditions of use are not intended to override, should any national law grant further rights to any user.

Conditions of use

Articles published within the Springer Nature group of companies which are made available through academic repositories remain subject to copyright. The following restrictions on use of such articles apply:

Academic research only

1. Archived content may only be used for academic research. Any content downloaded for text based experiments should be destroyed when the experiment is complete.

Use must not be for Commercial Purposes

2. Archived content may not be used for purposes that are intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation by means of sale, resale, licence, loan, transfer or any other form of commercial exploitation ("Commercial Purposes").

Wholesale re-publishing is prohibited

3. Archived content may not be published verbatim in whole or in part, whether or not this is done for Commercial Purposes, either in print or online.

4. This restriction does not apply to reproducing normal quotations with an appropriate citation. In the case of text-mining, individual words, concepts and quotes up to 100 words per matching sentence may be used, whereas longer paragraphs of text and images cannot (without specific permission from Springer Nature).

Moral rights

5. All use must be fully attributed. Attribution must take the form of a link—using the article DOI—to the published article on the journal's website.

6. All use must ensure that the authors' moral right to the integrity of their work is not compromised.

Third party content

7. Where content in the document is identified as belonging to a third party, it is the obligation of the user to ensure that any use complies with copyright policies of the owner.

Use at own risk

8. Any use of Springer Nature content is at your own risk and Springer Nature accepts no liability arising from such use.

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