| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1869 (Nature Journal) |
| Headquarters | 4 Crinan Street, London, United Kingdom |
| Products | Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine |
| Employees | >800[1] |
| Parent | Macmillan Publishers Ltd |
| Website | nature.com/npg |
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, online databases, and services across the life, physical, chemical and applied sciences and clinical medicine. This includes Nature research journals and Nature Reviews journals (since 2000), and academic journals that are society owned publications.
NPG also publishes Scientific American in 16 languages, a magazine intended for the general public.
NPG is a division of Macmillan Publishers, which in turn is owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. NPG's flagship title is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869.
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The former Nature Clinical Practice series was rebranded and folded into the Nature Reviews series in April 2009.[2] Other NPG services include Naturejobs, containing scientific career information, tools and jobs, the pre-print server Nature Precedings, Connotea (a free online reference management service for scientists), Scitable (a collaborative learning space for science), and Nature Network (a free social networking website for scientists). NPG has offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Gurgaon, Mexico City, and Basingstoke.
In most cases, the costs of NPG's publications are recovered via subscription to individuals and institutions. Over 40 journals allow their authors to publish open access articles, with the author paying a publication charge to the journal. The publisher also has several open access journals. Authors are also allowed to post accepted, unedited papers on their websites or the funding body's archives no earlier than 6 months after publication.[3]
In June 2010, a letter outlining the University of California libraries' pricing challenges with NPG was distributed to university faculty by campus librarians with the support of the systemwide University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication. The letter also described a potential boycott if the dispute was not resolved.[4] In August 2010, a joint statement was released stating "Our two organizations have agreed to work together in the coming months to address our mutual short- and long-term challenges, including an exploration of potential new approaches and evolving publishing models."[5]
In 2011, Nature launched its first line of electronic textbooks for the college market, starting with Principles of Biology, which was adopted by California State University.[6][7] The textbook line has been described as potentially breaking down the traditional textbook publishing model.[8]