Open Access

Open access logo (source: https://www.openaccess.nl/en/what-is-open-access)

In this blog post, I am discussing the open science policy for journals. The journal I have selected for this is the nature portfolio journals, with open access (OA) research journal for geosciences, such as nature communications and scientific reports.

The Nature portfolio research journal originated in the United Kingdom (UK) and its headquarters is located in London, but it has offices located all over the world including New York (USA), San Francisco (USA), Madrid (Spain), Mexico City (Spain), Delhi (India), etc. According to the nature portfolio website, the journal aims “to serve the research community by publishing its most significant discoveries – findings that advance knowledge and address some of the greatest challenges.” Through its many sub journals and articles, the journal does fulfill in most parts its aims through weekly publications of research, reviews, and news. Personally, I find the weekly news articles, particularly articles that relate to climate change really insightful.

The journal claims to be fully committed to the goals of OA research, with policies that help authors achieve a high level of openness with their research and support them in meeting the OA requirements. However, just until recently most of the journals at nature portfolio were not OA. An announcement on the website states: “From January 2021, we will offer open access options for all primary research…, launch a guided OA pilot on three Nature research journals…” This commitment to OA albeit recent has positioned the journal as one of the leading publications for OA research. Following the announcement, the journal introduced what it termed; “transformative journals”, which will offer researchers the ability to choose to publish their primary research using the traditional publishing route or immediate gold OA. This gold OA in a transformative journal has the following advantages:

1. Helping the researcher meet the requirements of any research funder/institution.

2. Publishing research in OA.

3. The copyright remains with the researcher.

4. Regular updates on the volume, usage, citations, and online attention of the OA article.

These are excellent reasons that highlight the commitment of nature portfolio to OA publications, with the interest of the researcher at heart (~). The article processing charge for these excellent services is available at a token of €9500 (US$10370), but that is a story for another blogpost.