Hybrid journals at Nature Publishing Group

NASIG3rd May, 2014

James Butcher PhDAssociate Director

Open Publishing

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NPG and open access

2005: first fully OA title: Molecular Systems Biology

2009-2011: all non-Nature journals offer OA option (hybrid)

2010: Nature Communications (hybrid journal)

2011: Scientific Reports(fully OA)

2013: Frontiers (fully OA)

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Open access at NPG, Frontiers, and Palgrave Macmillan

• NPG and Frontiers published 10,500 open access research papers in 2013, 51% of their combined research publication output for the year.

• Nature Communications published ~1,600 articles in 2013; ~500 were OA.

• Scientific Reports published ~2,500 open-access articles in 2013, more than 3 times the 800 OA articles published in 2012.

• Scientific Data launches next month

• We offer open access options on all of our partner journals; 1,500 OA research papers were published in 2013, a growth of 6% on 2012.

• In January 2013 Palgrave Macmillan announced open access options across 55 of its 60 journals, all Palgrave Pivot ebooks and monographs.

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NPG does not “double dip”

• Nature Publishing Group has published its hybrid journal site license pricing policy.

• Under this policy, any price adjustments for 2015 (for example) are based on the year-on-year change in subscription content published in 2012 and 2013.

• For example • In 2012 Journal X publishes 100 subscription papers• In 2013 Journal X starts to offer OA as hybrid option• In 2013 Journal X publishes 80 subscription papers and 20 OA papers• Therefore the price in 2015 would decrease by 20%

• However, at the request of our librarian panel, the price will not change unless the % change (either up or down) is >10%

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Nature Communications

• Launched in April 2010

• Scope: all areas of the natural sciences

• Authors can choose subscription or OA at acceptance

• ~18% acceptance rate

• In-house editorial team

• Offers three Creative Commons licenses– CC BY– CC BY-NC-ND– CC BY-NC-SA

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Submissions

• Received ~30,000 submissions since launch 4 years ago

• The journal received ~1400 submissions in March 2013; (Nature receives ~900 / month)

• ~33% of submissions were previously considered at another Nature journal

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The editorial team has grown…

2 years ago…

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The editorial team has grown…

Hiring Hiring Hiring Hiring Hiring

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Publications

• Published 701 papers in 2012• Published ~1600 papers in 2013, of

which ~500 were OA• The 16 Nature Research Journals

publish ~2100 papers / year

• 53% biology• 33% physics• 11% chemistry• 3% earth and environmental sciences

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BiologyChemistryEarthPhysics

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Open access uptake

• In 2012, 41% of authors chose OA• In 2013, 31% of authors chose OA

• OA uptake rate varies by subject. In 2013:

– 39% of biologists chose OA– 34% of physicists chose OA– 23% of earth scientists chose OA– 22% of chemists chose OA

• We started to offer CC BY in April, 2013• Since then, ~25% of OA authors have

chosen CC BY• The uptake of CC BY-NC-ND has not

changed; it looks as though some of the CC BY-NC-SA authors have moved to CC BY

• 1/3rd of authors choose the most restrictive license

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%70%80%90%

100%CC BY

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MetricsWeb traffic

• 5.5m page views in 2012• 11.3m page views in 2013

Impact factor

• The 2012 impact factor is 10.015 • ~150 journals (out of 8500) have an IF >10

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Unique data set

• Are open access articles cited more than subscription articles?• Does this vary by subject area?

• Are open access articles viewed more than subscription articles?

• Is there a correlation between page views and citations? Does OA affect this?

• How does open access status affect altmetrics?