Nature Communications Goes Open Access

Nature Communications has announced it will go open access only from 20 October in a bid to show the world that quality papers do not have to be paid for.  The digital-only journal launched in 2010 as a part subscription, part open access journal and has proven itself invaluable to the Nature Publishing Group's roster, coming third in Thomson Reuters' 2013 Journal Citation Reports among multidisciplinary titles, behind only Science and Nature. This means it is one of the most cited journals in the world. Together with the fact it receives 1,500 submissions a month, 18 percent of which it approves, this appears to be proof enough for Nature that the open access business model can be an influential and reputable one. Nature Communications is now set to be its first fully open access Nature-branded title.

The move comes off the back of a Research Information Network (RIN) survey that revealed open access papers enjoy a small but significant citation increase compared to subscription papers, increased discoverability, twice as many downloads and three times as many views.

"That's not the only reason we decided to do it -- the reason is to drive things forward," Sam Burridge, Managing Director for Open Research, Nature Publishing Group/Palgrave Macmillan, told Wired.co.uk. "For us, we know one of the blockers to open research becoming a broader thing is concern among authors over quality. Our job is to take away those blockers, and we are perfectly placed to do so."...