Nature Publishing Group

Nature Publishing Group
Parent company Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Status Active
Founded 1869 (Nature Journal)
Founder Alexander Macmillan, Daniel Macmillan
Country of origin United Kingdom
Headquarters location 4 Crinan Street, London
Distribution Worldwide
Publication types Academic journals, magazines, online databases
Nonfiction topics Science, medicine
Official website www.nature.com/npg_/index_npg.html

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is an international publishing company that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine. NPG's flagship publication is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869. It also publishes Nature research journals, Nature Reviews journals (since 2000), and society-owned academic journals. NPG also publishes Scientific American in 16 languages, a magazine intended for the general public. In 2013, Nature Publishing Group bought a controlling stake[1] in Frontiers.[2]

NPG is a division of Macmillan Publishers, a subsidiary of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. On January 15, 2015, Holtzbrinck/NPG and Springer Science+Business Media announced a merger.[3]

Company overview

NPG employs over 800 people[4] in its offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Seoul, Washington, D.C., Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Gurgaon, Mexico City, and Basingstoke.

Products

Journals

The former Nature Clinical Practice series was rebranded and folded into the Nature Reviews series in April 2009.[5]

Access and pricing

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 (or their institution or research funder) 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.[6]

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.[7] 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."[8]

On 2 December 2014, NPG announced that it would make content from all of Nature‍ '​s journals available online for free. However, articles are presented using the digital rights management system ReadCube (which is funded by the Macmillan subsidiary Digital Science), which only provides "read-only" access, and does not allow readers to download, copy, print, or otherwise distribute the content. Additionally, links to these articles can only be generated by Nature subscribers and a group of selected media outlets—but the links can be publicly distributed through online articles and social networks afterwards. Providers can also provide annotations on the linked articles.[9] The move was designed to counter the trend of "dark sharing", while leveraging ReadCube to provide analytics. While considering it a compromise between fully restricted access, critics do not consider this to be a true open access scheme due to its restrictions on use and distribution.[10]

Textbooks

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.[11][12] The textbook line has been described by Vikram Savkar, Senior Vice President and Publishing Director at Nature Publishing, as potentially breaking down the traditional textbook publishing model.[13]

Other services

Other active NPG services include:

Past experiments at offering online services include:

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Scientific Publishing: Changing Nature". The Economist. 2013-02-27.
  2. ↑ Baynes, Grace. "Nature Publishing Group and Frontiers form alliance to further open science". Nature Publishing Group.
  3. ↑ "Holtzbrinck Publishing Group and BC Partners Announce Agreement to Merge Majority of MacMillan Science and Education with Springer Science+Business Media", Jan. 15, 2015.
  4. ↑ Work @ NPG, Nature Publishing Group.
  5. ↑ "Nature Reviews goes clinical" (Press release). "Nature Publishing Group. 28 January 2009. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
  6. ↑ License, Nature Publishing Group.
  7. ↑ Howard, Jennifer (2010-06-08). "U. of California Tries Just Saying No to Rising Journal Costs". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
  8. ↑ Statement from the University of California and Nature Publishing Group, 25 August 2010 retrieved on 15 March 2011
  9. ↑ "Nature journal subscribers can now share article links globally". Wired.co.uk. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  10. ↑ "Science journal Nature to make archives available online". The Guardian. 2 December 2014. Retrieved 3 December 2014.
  11. ↑ "Announcing Principles of Biology, an Interactive Textbook by Nature Education". Nature.com. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  12. ↑ "NPG project". Als.csuprojects.org. 2011-05-24. Retrieved 2012-11-19.
  13. ↑ "E-textbooks are destroying the old publishing business model". Betanews.com. Retrieved 2012-11-19.

External links