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PLoS (and NPG) redefine the scholarly publishing landscape

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Nature Publishing Group yesterday announced a new venture, very closely modelled on the success of PLoS ONE, titled Scientific Reports. Others have started to cover the details and some implications so I won’t do that here. I think there are three big issues here. What does this tell us about the state of Open Access? What are the risks and possibilities for NPG? And why oh why does NPG keep insisting on a non-commercial licence? I think those merit separate posts so here I’m just going to deal with the big issue. And I think this is really big.

[I know it bores people, hell it bores me, but the non-commercial licence is a big issue. It is an even bigger issue here because this launch may define the ground rules for future scholarly communication. Open Access with a non-commercial licence actually achieves very little either for the community, or indeed for NPG, except perhaps as a cynical gesture. The following discussion really assumes that we can win the argument with NPG to change those terms. If we can the future is very interesting indeed.]

The Open Access movement has really been defined by two strands of approach. The “Green Road” involves self archiving of pre-prints or published articles in subscription journals as a means of providing access. It has had its successes, perhaps more so in the humanities, with deposition mandates becoming increasingly common both at the institutional level and the level of funders. The other approach, the “Gold Road” is for most intents and purposes defined by commercial and non-profit publishers based on a business model of article processing charges (APCs) to authors and making the published articles freely available at a publisher website. There is a thriving community of “shoe-string business model” journals publishing small numbers of articles without processing charges but in terms of articles published OA publishing is dominated by BioMedCentral, the pioneers in this area, now owned by Springer, Public Library of Science, and on a smaller scale Hindawi. This approach has gained more traction in the sciences, particularly the biological sciences.

From my perspective yesterday’s announcement means that for the sciences, the argument for Gold Open Access as the default publication mechanism has effectively been settled. Furthermore the future of most scholarly publishing will be in publication venues that place no value on a subjective assessment of “importance”. Those are big claim, but NPG have played a bold and possibly decisive move, in an environment where PLoS ONE was already starting to dominate some fields of science.

PLoS ONE was already becoming a default publication venue. A standard path for getting a paper published is, have a punt at Cell/Nature/Science, maybe a go at one of the “nearly top tier” journals, and then head straight for PLoS ONE, in some cases with the technical assessments already in hand. However in some fields, particularly chemistry, the PLoS brand wasn’t enough to be attractive against the strong traditional pull of American Chemical Society or Royal Society of Chemistry journals and Angewandte Chemie. Scientific Reports changes this because of the association with the Nature brand. If I were the ACS I’d be very worried this morning.

The announcement will also be scaring the hell out of those publishers who have a lot of separate, lower tier journals. The problem for publication business models has never been with the top tier, that can be made to work because people want to pay for prestige (whether we can afford it in the long term is a separate question). The problem has been the volume end of the market. I back Dorothea Salo’s prediction [and again] that 2011/12 would see the big publishers looking very closely at their catalogue of 100s or 1000s of low yield, low volume, low prestige journals and see the beginning of mass closures, simply to keep down subscription increases that academic libraries can no longer pay for. Aggregated large scale journals with streamlined operating and peer review procedures, simplified and more objective selection criteria, and APC supported business models make a lot of sense in this market. Elsevier, Wiley, Springer (and to a certain extent BMC) have just lost the start in the race to dominate what may become the only viable market in the medium term.

With two big players now in this market there will be real competition. Others have suggested [see Jason Priem‘s comment] this will be on the basis of services and information. This might be true in the longer term but in the short to medium term it will be on two issues: brand, and price. The choice of name is a risk for NPG, the Nature brand is crucial to success of the venture, but there’s a risk of dilution of the brand which is NPG’s major asset. That the APC for Science Reports has been set identically to PLoS ONE is instructive. I have previously argued that APC driven business models will be the most effective way of forcing down publication costs and I would expect to see competition develop here. I hope we might soon see a third player in this space to drive effective competition.

At the end of the day what this means is that there are now seriously credible options for publishing in Open Access venues (assuming we win the licensing argument) across the sciences, that funders now support Article Processing Charges, and that there is really no longer any reason to publish in that obscure subscription journal that no-one actually read anyway. The dream of a universal database of freely accessible research outputs is that much closer to our reach.

Above all, this means that PLoS in particular has succeeded in its aim of making Gold Open Access publication a credible default option. The founders and team at PLoS set out with the aim of changing the publication landscape. PLoS ONE was a radical and daring step at the time which they pulled off. The other people who experimented in this space also deserve credit but it was PLoS ONE in particular that found the sweet spot between credibility and pushing the envelope. I hope that those in office are cracking open some bubbly today. But not too much. For the first time there is now some serious competition and its going to be tough to keep up. There remains a lot more work to be done (assuming we can sort out the licence).

Full disclosure: I am an academic editor for PLoS ONE, editor in chief of the BioMedCentral journal Open Research Computation, and have advised PLoS, BMC, and NPG in a non-paid capacity on a variety of issues that relate closely to this post.

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Why I am disappointed with Nature Communications

Towards the end of last year I wrote up some initial reactions to the announcement of Nature Communications and the communications team at NPG were kind enough to do a Q&A to look at some of the issues and concerns I raised. Specifically I was concerned about two things. The licence that would be used for the “Open Access” option and the way that journal would be positioned in terms of “quality”, particularly as it related to the other NPG journals and the approach to peer review.

Unfortunately I have to say that I feel these have been fudged, and this is unfortunate because there was a real opportunity here to do something different and quite exciting.  I get the impression that that may even have been the original intention. But from my perspective what has resulted is a poor compromise between my hopes and commercial concerns.

At the centre of my problem is the use of a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial licence for the “Open Access” option. This doesn’t qualify under the BBB declarations on Open Access publication and it doesn’t qualify for the SPARC seal for Open Access. But does this really matter or is it just a side issue for a bunch of hard core zealots? After all if people can see it that’s a good start isn’t it? Well yes, it is a good start but non-commercial terms raise serious problems. Putting aside the fact that there is an argument that universities are commercial entities and therefore can’t legitimately use content with non-commercial licences the problem is that NC terms limit the ability of people to create new business models that re-use content and are capable of scaling.

We need these business models because the current model of scholarly publication is simply unaffordable. The argument is often made that if you are unsure whether you are allowed to use content then you can just ask, but this simply doesn’t scale. And lets be clear about some of the things that NC means you’re not licensed for: using a paper for commercially funded research even within a university, using the content of paper to support a grant application, using the paper to judge a patent application, using a paper to assess the viability of a business idea…the list goes on and on. Yes you can ask if you’re not sure, but asking each and every time does not scale. This is the central point of the BBB declarations. For scientific communication to scale it must allow the free movement and re-use of content.

Now if this were coming from any old toll access publisher I would just roll my eyes and move on, but NPG sets itself up to be judged by a higher standard. NPG is a privately held company, not beholden to share holders. It is a company that states that it is committed to advancing scientific communication not simply traditional publication. Non-commercial licences do not do this. From the Q&A:

Q: Would you accept that a CC-BY-NC(ND) licence does not qualify as Open Access under the terms of the Budapest and Bethesda Declarations because it limits the fields and types of re-use?

A: Yes, we do accept that. But we believe that we are offering authors and their funders the choices they require.Our licensing terms enable authors to comply with, or exceed, the public access mandates of all major funders.

NPG is offering the minimum that allows compliance. Not what will most effectively advance scientific communication. Again, I would expect this of a shareholder-controlled profit-driven toll access dead tree publisher but I am holding NPG to a higher standard. Even so there is a legitimate argument to be made that non-commercial licences are needed to make sure that NPG can continue to support these and other activities. This is why I asked in the Q&A whether NPG made significant money off re-licensing of content for commercial purposes. This is a discussion we could have on the substance – the balance between a commercial entity providing a valuable service and the necessary limitations we might accept as the price of ensuring the continued provision of that service. It is a value for money judgement. But not one we can make without a clear view of the costs and benefits.

So I’m calling NPG on this one. Make a case for why non-commercial licences are necessary or even beneficial, not why they are acceptable. They damage scientific communication, they create unnecessary confusion about rights, and more importantly they damage the development of new business models to support scientific communication. Explain why it is commercially necessary for the development of these new activities, or roll it back, and take a lead on driving the development of science communication forward. Don’t take the kind of small steps we expect from other, more traditional, publishers. Above all, lets have that discussion. What is the price we would have to pay to change the license terms?

Because I think it goes deeper. I think that NPG are actually limiting their potential income by focussing on the protection of their income from legacy forms of commercial re-use. They could make more money off this content by growing the pie than by protecting their piece of a specific income stream. It goes to the heart of a misunderstanding about how to effectively exploit content on the web. There is money to be made through re-packaging content for new purposes. The content is obviously key but the real value offering is the Nature brand. Which is much better protected as a trademark than through licensing. Others could re-package and sell on the content but they can never put the Nature brand on it.

By making the material available for commercial re-use NPG would help to expand a high value market for re-packaged content which they would be poised to dominate. Sure, if you’re a business you could print off your OA Nature articles and put them on the coffee table, but if you want to present them to investors you want that Nature logo and Nature packaging that you can only get from one place.  And that NPG does damn well. NPG often makes the case that it adds value through selection, presentation, and aggregation. It is the editorial brand that is of value. Let’s see that demonstrated though monetization of the brand, rather than through unnecessarily restricting the re-use of the content, especially where authors are being charged $5000 to cover the editorial costs.

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Nature Communications Q&A

A few weeks ago I wrote a post looking at the announcement of Nature Communications, a new journal from Nature Publishing Group that will be online only and have an open access option. Grace Baynes, fromthe  NPG communications team kindly offered to get some of the questions raised in that piece answered and I am presenting my questions and the answers from NPG here in their complete form. I will leave any thoughts and comments on the answers for another post. There has also been more information from NPG available at the journal website since my original post, some of which is also dealt with below. Below this point, aside from formatting I have left the response in its original form.

Q: What is the motivation behind Nature Communications? Where did the impetus to develop this new journal come from?

NPG has always looked to ensure it is serving the scientific community and providing services which address researchers changing needs. The motivation behind Nature Communications is to provide authors with more choice; both in terms of where they publish, and what access model they want for their papers.At present NPG does not provide a rapid publishing opportunity for authors with high-quality specialist work within the Nature branded titles. The launch of Nature Communications aims to address that editorial need. Further, Nature Communications provides authors with a publication choice for high quality work, which may not have the reach or breadth of work published in Nature and the Nature research journals, or which may not have a home within the existing suite of Nature branded journals. At the same time authors and readers have begun to embrace online only titles – hence we decided to launch Nature Communications as a digital-first journal in order to provide a rapid publication forum which embraces the use of keyword searching and personalisation. Developments in publishing technology, including keyword archiving and personalization options for readers, make a broad scope, online-only journal like Nature Communications truly useful for researchers.

Over the past few years there has also been increasing support by funders for open access, including commitments to cover the costs of open access publication. Therefore, we decided to provide an open access option within Nature Communications for authors who wish to make their articles open access.

Q: What opportunities does NPG see from Open Access? What are the most important threats?

Opportunities: Funder policies shifting towards supporting gold open access, and making funds available to cover the costs of open access APCs. These developments are creating a market for journals that offer an open access option.Threats: That the level of APCs that funders will be prepared to pay will be too low to be sustainable for journals with high quality editorial and high rejection rates.

Q: Would you characterise the Open Access aspects of NC as a central part of the journal strategy

Yes. We see the launch of Nature Communications as a strategic development.Nature Communications will provide a rapid publication venue for authors with high quality work which will be of interest to specialists in their fields. The title will also allow authors to adhere to funding agency requirements by making their papers freely available at point of publication if they wish to do so.

or as an experiment that is made possible by choosing to develop a Nature branded online only journal?

NPG doesn’t view Nature Communications as experimental. We’ve been offering open access options on a number of NPG journals in recent years, and monitoring take-up on these journals. We’ve also been watching developments in the wider industry.

Q: What would you give as the definition of Open Access within NPG?

It’s not really NPG’s focus to define open access. We’re just trying to offer choice to authors and their funders.

Q: NPG has a number of “Open Access” offerings that provide articles free to the user as well as specific articles within Nature itself under a Creative Commons Non-commercial Share-alike licence with the option to authors to add a “no derivative works” clause. Can you explain the rationale behind this choice of licence?

Again, it’s about providing authors with choice within a framework of commercial viability.On all our journals with an open access option, authors can choose between the Creative Commons Attribu­tion Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence and the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commer­cial-No Derivs 3.0 Unported Licence.The only instance where authors are not given a choice at present are genome sequences articles published in Nature and other Nature branded titles, which are published under Creative Commons Attribu­tion Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence. No APC is charged for these articles, as NPG considers making these freely available an important service to the research community.

Q: Does NPG recover significant income by charging for access or use of these articles for commercial purposes? What are the costs (if any) of enforcing the non-commercial terms of licences? Does NPG actively seek to enforce those terms?

We’re not trying to prevent derivative works or reuse for academic research purposes (as evidenced by our recent announcement that NPG author manuscripts would be included in UK PMC’s open access subset).What we are trying to keep a cap on is illegal e-prints and reprints where companies may be using our brands or our content to their benefit. Yes we do enforce these terms, and we have commercial licensing and reprints services available.

Q: What will the licence be for NC?

Authors who wish to take for the open access option can choose either the Creative Commons Attribu­tion Noncommercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence or the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commer­cial-No Derivs 3.0 Unported Licence.Subscription access articles will be published under NPG’s standard License to Publish.

Q: Would you accept that a CC-BY-NC(ND) licence does not qualify as Open Access under the terms of the Budapest and Bethesda Declarations because it limits the fields and types of re-use?

Yes, we do accept that. But we believe that we are offering authors and their funders the choices they require.Our licensing terms enable authors to comply with, or exceed, the public access mandates of all major funders.

Q: The title “Nature Communications” implies rapid publication. The figure of 28 days from submission to publication has been mentioned as a minimum. Do you have a target maximum or indicative average time in mind?

We are aiming to publish manuscripts within 28 days of acceptance, contrary to an earlier report which was in error. In addition, Nature Communications will have a streamlined peer review system which limits presubmission enquiries, appeals and the number of rounds of review – all of which will speed up the decision making process on submitted manuscripts.

Q: In the press release an external editorial board is described. This is unusual for a Nature branded journal. Can you describe the makeup and selection of this editorial board in more detail?

In deciding whether to peer review manuscripts, editors may, on occasion, seek advice from a member of the Editorial Advisory Panel. However, the final decision rests entirely with the in-house editorial team. This is unusual for a Nature-branded journal, but in fact, Nature Communications is simply formalising a well-established system in place at other Nature journals.The Editorial Advisory Panel will be announced shortly and will consist of recognized experts from all areas of science. Their collective expertise will support the editorial team in ensuring that every field is represented in the journal.

Q: Peer review is central to the Nature brand, but rapid publication will require streamlining somewhere in the production pipeline. Can you describe the peer review process that will be used at NC?

The peer review process will be as rigorous as any Nature branded title – Nature Communications will only publish papers that represent a convincing piece of work. Instead, the journal will achieve efficiencies by discouraging presubmission enquiries, capping the number of rounds of review, and limiting appeals on decisions. This will enable the editors to make fast decisions at every step in the process.

Q: What changes to your normal process will you implement to speed up production?

The production process will involve a streamlined manuscript tracking system and maximise the use of metadata to ensure manuscripts move swiftly through the production process. All manuscripts will undergo rigorous editorial checks before acceptance in order to identify, and eliminate, hurdles for the production process. Alongside using both internal and external production staff we will work to ensure all manuscripts are published within 28days of acceptance – however some manuscripts may well take longer due to unforeseen circumstances. We also hope the majority of papers will take less!

Q: What volume of papers do you aim to publish each year in NC?

As Nature Communications is an online only title the journal is not limited by page-budget. As long as we are seeing good quality manuscripts suitable for publication following peer review we will continue to expand. We aim to launch publishing 10 manuscripts per month and would be happy remaining with 10-20 published manuscripts per month but would equally be pleased to see the title expand as long as manuscripts were of suitable quality.

Q: The Scientist article says there would be an 11 page limit. Can you explain the reasoning behind a page limit on an online only journal?

Articles submitted to Nature Communications can be up to 10 pages in length. Any journal, online or not, will consider setting limits to the ‘printed paper’ size (in PDF format) primarily for the benefit of the reader. Setting a limit encourages authors to edit their text accurately and succinctly to maximise impact and readability.

Q: The press release description of pap
ers for NC sounds very similar to papers found in the other “Nature Baby” journals, such as Nature Physics, Chemistry, Biotechnology, Methods etc. Can you describe what would be distinctive about a paper to make it appropriate for NC? Is there a concern that it will compete with other Nature titles?

Nature Communications will publish research of very high quality, but where the scientific reach and public interest is perhaps not that required for publication in Nature and the Nature research journals. We expect the articles published in Nature Communications to be of interest and importance to specialists in their fields. This scope of Nature Communications also includes areas like high-energy physics, astronomy, palaeontology and developmental biology, that aren’t represented by a dedicated Nature research journal.

Q: To be a commercial net gain NC must publish papers that would otherwise have not appeared in other Nature journals. Clearly NPG receives many such papers that are not published but is it not that case that these papers are, at least as NPG measures them, by definition not of the highest quality? How can you publish more while retaining the bar at its present level?

Nature journals have very high rejection rates, in many cases well over 90% of what is submitted. A proportion of these articles are very high quality research and of importance for a specialist audience, but lack the scientific reach and public interest associated with high impact journals like Nature and the Nature research journals. The best of these manuscripts could find a home in Nature Communications. In addition, we expect to attract new authors to Nature Communications, who perhaps have never submitted to the Nature family of journals, but are looking for a high quality journal with rapid publication, a wide readership and an open access option.

Q: What do you expect the headline subscription fee for NC to be? Can you give an approximate idea of what an average academic library might pay to subscribe over and above their current NPG subscription?

We haven’t set prices for subscription access for Nature Communications yet, because we want them to base them on the number of manuscripts the journal may potentially publish and the proportion of open access content. This will ensure the site licence price is based on absolute numbers of manuscripts available through subscription access. We’ll announce these in 2010, well before readers or librarians will be asked to pay for content.

Q: Do personal subscriptions figure significantly in your financial plan for the journal?

No, there will be no personal subscriptions for Nature Communications. Nature Communications will publish no news or other ‘front half content’, and we expect many of the articles to be available to individuals via the open access option or an institutional site license. If researchers require access to a subscribed-access article that is not available through their institution or via the open-access option, they have the option of buying the article through traditional pay-per-view and docu­ment-delivery options. For a journal with such a broad scope, we expect individuals will want to pick and choose the articles they pay for.

Q: What do you expect author charges to be for articles licensed for free re-use?

$5,000 (The Americas)€3,570 (Europe)¥637,350 (Japan)£3,035 (UK and Rest of World)Manuscripts accepted before April 2010 will receive a 20% discount off the quoted APC.

Q: Does this figure cover the expected costs of article production?

This is a flat fee with no additional production charges (such as page or colour figure charges). The article processing charges have been set to cover our costs, including article production.

Q: The press release states that subscription costs will be adjusted to reflect the take up of the author-pays option. Can you commit to a mechanistic adjustment to subscription charges based on the percentage of author-pays articles?

We are working towards a clear pricing principle for Nature Communications, using input from NESLi and others. Because the amount of subscription content may vary substantially from year to year, an entirely mechanistic approach may not give libraries the ability to they need to forecast with confidence.

Q: Does the strategic plan for the journal include targets for take-up of the author-pays option? If so can you disclose what those are?

We have modelled Nature Communications as an entirely subscription access journal, a totally open access journal, and continuing the hybrid model on an ongoing basis. The business model works at all these levels.

Q: If the author-pays option is a success at NC will NPG consider opening up such options on other journals?

We already have open access options on more than 10 journals, and we have recently announced the launch in 2010 of a completely open access journal, Cell Death & Disease. In addition, we publish the successful open access journal Molecular Systems Biology, in association with the European Molecular Biology OrganizationWe’re open to new and evolving business models where it is sustainable.The rejection rates on Nature and the Nature research journals are so high that we expect the APC for these journals would be substantially higher than that for Nature Communications.

Q: Do you expect NC to make a profit? If so over what timeframe?

As with all new launches we would expect Nature Communications to be financially viable during a reasonable timeframe following launch.

Q: In five years time what are the possible outcomes that would be seen at NPG as the journal being a success? What might a failure look like?

We would like to see Nature Communications publish high quality manuscripts covering all of the natural sciences and work to serve the research community. The rationale for launching this title is to ensure NPG continues to serve the community with new publishing opportunities.A successful outcome would be a journal with an excellent reputation for quality and service, a good impact factor, a substantial archive of published papers that span the entire editorial scope and significant market share.

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Nature Communications: A breakthrough for open access?

A great deal of excitement but relatively little detailed information thus far has followed the announcement by Nature Publishing Group of a new online only journal with an author-pays open access option. NPG have managed and run a number of open access (although see caveats below) and hybrid journals as well as online only journals for a while now. What is different about Nature Communications is that it will be the first clearly Nature-branded journal that falls into either of these categories.

This is significant because it is bringing the Nature brand into the mix. Stephen Inchcoombe, executive director of NPG in email correspondence quoted in the The Scientist, notes the increasing uptake of open-access options and the willingness of funders to pay processing charges for publication as major reasons for NPG to provide a wider range of options.

In the NPG press release David Hoole, head of content licensing for NPG says:

“Developments in publishing and web technologies, coupled with increasing commitment by research funders to cover the costs of open access, mean the time is right for a journal that offers editorial excellence and real choice for authors.”

The reference to “editorial excellence” and the use of the Nature brand are crucial here and what makes this announcement significant. The question is whether NPG can deliver something novel and successful.

The journal will be called Nature Communications. “Communications” is a moniker usually reserved for “rapid publication” journals. At the same time the Nature brand is all about exclusivity, painstaking peer review, and editorial work. Can these two be reconciled successfully and, perhaps most importantly, how much will it cost? In the article in The Scientist a timeframe of 28 days from submission to publication is mentioned but as a minimum period. Four weeks is fast, but not super-fast for an online only journal.

But speed is not the only criterion. Reasonably fast and with a Nature brand may well be good enough for many, particularly those who have come out of the triage process at Nature itself. So what of that branding – where is the new journal pitched? The press release is a little equivocal on this:

Nature Communications will publish research papers in all areas of the biological, chemical and physical sciences, encouraging papers that provide a multidisciplinary approach. The research will be of the highest quality, without necessarily having the scientific reach of papers published in Nature and the Nature research journals, and as such will represent advances of significant interest to specialists within each field.

So more specific – less general interest, but still “the highest quality”. This is interesting because there is an argument that this could easily cannibalise the “Nature Baby” journals. Why wait for Nature Biotech or Nature Physics when you can get your paper out faster in Nature Communications? Or on the other hand might it be out-competed by the other Nature journals – if the selection criteria are more or less the same, highest quality but not of general interest, why would you go for a new journal over the old favourites? Particularly if you are the kind of person that feels uncomfortable with online only journals.

If the issue of the selectivity difference between the old and the new Nature journals then the peer review process can perhaps offer us clues. Again some interesting but not entirely clear statements in the press release:

A team of independent editors, supported by an external editorial advisory panel, will make rapid and fair publication decisions based on peer review, with all the rigour expected of a Nature-branded journal.

This sounds a little like the PLoS ONE model – a large editorial board with the intention of spreading the load of peer review so as to speed it up. With the use of the term “peer review” it is to be presumed that this means external peer review by referees with no formal connection to NPG. Again I would have thought that NPG are very unlikely to dilute their brand by utilising editorial peer review of any sort. Given the slow point of the process is getting a response back from peer reviewers, whether they are reviewing for Nature or for PLoS ONE, its not clear to me how this can be speed up or indeed even changed from the traditional process, without risking a perception of a quality drop. This is going to be a very tough balance to find.

So finally, does this meant that NPG are serious about Open Access? NPG have been running OA and online only journals (although see the caveat below about the licence) for a while now and appear to be serious about increasing this offering. They will have looked very seriously at the numbers before making a decision on this and my reading is that those numbers are saying that they need to have a serious offering. This is a hybrid and it will be easy to make accusations that, along with other fairly unsuccessful hybrid offerings, it is being set up to fail.

I doubt this is the case personally, but nor do I necessarily believe that the OA option will necessarily get the strong support it will need to thrive. The critical question will be pricing. If this is pitched at the level of other hybrid options, too high to be worth what is being offered in terms of access, then it will appear to have been set up to fail. Yet NPG can justifiably charge a premium if they are providing real editorial value.  Indeed they have to. NPG has in the past said that they would have to charge enormous processing charges to published authors to recover costs of peer review. So they can’t offer something relatively cheap, yet claim the peer review is to the same standards. The price is absolutely critical to credibility. I would guess something around £2500 or $US4000. Higher than PLoS Biology/Medicine but lower than other hybrid offerings.

So then the question becomes value for money. Is the OA offering up to scratch? Again the press release is not as enlightening as one would wish:

Authors who choose the open-access option will be able to license their work under a Creative Commons license, including the option to allow derivative works.

So does that mean it will be a non-commercial license? In which case it is not Open Access under the BBB declarations (most explicitly in the Budapest Declaration). This would be consistent with the existing author rights that NPG allows and their current “Open Access” journal licences but in my opinion would be a mistake. If there is any chance of the accusation that this isn’t “real OA” sticking then NPG will make a rod for their own back. And I really can’t see it making the slightest difference to their cost recovery. Equally the option to allow derivative works? The BBB declarations are unequivocal about derivative works being at the core of Open Access. From  a tactical perspective it would be much simpler and easier for them to go for straight CC-BY. It will get support (or at least neutralize opposition) from even the hardline OA community, and it doesn’t leave NPG open to any criticism of muddying the waters. The fact that such a journal is being released shows that NPG gets the growing importance of Open Access publication. This paragraph, in its current form, suggests that the organization as a whole hasn’t internalised the messages about why. There are people within NPG who get this through and through but this paragraph suggests to me that that understanding has not got far enough within the organisation to make this journal a success. The lack of mention of a specific licence is a red rag and an entirely unnecessary one.

So in summary the outlook is positive. The efforts of the OA movement are having an impact at the highest levels amongst traditional publishers. Whether you view this as a positive or a negative response it is a success in my view that NPG feels that a response is necessary. But the devil is in the details. Critical to both the journal’s success and the success of this initiative as a public relations exercise will be the pricing, the licence and acceptance of the journal by the OA movement. The press release is not as promising on these issues as might be hoped. But it is early days yet and no doubt there will be more information to come as the journal gets closer to going live.

There is a Nature Network Forum for discussions of Nature Communications which will be a good place to see new information as it comes out.