News From Nature

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

**Apologies for cross-posting**

The following is a letter that has been sent to all NPG customers.
 
Kind regards, Annette Thomas, Managing Director - Nature Publishing Group

**** 

September 2003
 
Dear Customer,
 
Since its creation in 2000, Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has grown
rapidly, and we would like to inform you of some recent developments,
initiatives and successes as we move towards 2004.
 
Most notably, this year's Journal Citation Report, published by
Thomson-ISI, ranks seven NPG titles in the top ten journals. Nature's
impact factor is 30.4, a gain of 2.5 over last year. The recently launched
Nature Reviews have all jumped straight to the top of their categories,
with their first published impact factors.  These are outstanding
achievements, not just on the part of NPG, but also all our authors,
subscribers, and readers, both past and present, who have helped make the
Nature journals the world's leading scientific periodicals.
 
To ensure the continued success of our titles, and in recognition of the
changing priorities of our authors, we have initiated a range of new
policies and projects. Since early 2002, NPG no longer requires authors to
transfer copyright. Instead, we ask only for an exclusive licence to
publish. In return, authors are free to reuse their papers in any of their
future printed work and have the right to post a copy of the published
paper on their own websites and in course packs. Further, we are
introducing Advanced Online Publication (AOP) on all journals hosted by
nature.com, allowing authors to distribute their papers more rapidly than
ever before.
 
Nature.com is NPG's internet publishing platform, and now hosts over 60
NPG journals, including such prestigious society publications as British
Journal of Cancer, Neuropsychopharmacology, and EMBO Reports. In 2001, we
introduced a new site licence policy, which has been positively received
by the library community, and rapidly adopted by thousands of
institutions. Now, over 8 million researchers worldwide have direct access
to NPG journals on nature.com, and over three million unique users visit
nature.com each month.
 
>From 2004, NPG will publish additional prestigious journals on behalf of
respected societies. These include EMBO Journal, on behalf of the European
Molecular Biology Organisation, and Modern Pathology and Laboratory
Investigation, on behalf of the U.S. and Canadian Academy of Pathology. We
are also launching a new title, Nature Reviews Microbiology, in October
2003, and we continue our investment in digitisation with the release of
the Nature Archive: January 1987-December 1996.
 
NPG, with other STM publishers, has also taken major steps to broaden
access in developing countries, and has been a founding member of the
HINARI project, launched in 2002 and led by the World Health Organisation.
Already, many thousands of health workers and researchers, in a thousand
public health institutions, in nearly a hundred countries, have access to
NPG content. NPG will also participate, with the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation, in AGORA, providing content to agricultural
libraries in developing countries, contributing in this small way to
global food security.
 
NPG is a leading player in other industry initiatives, including CrossRef
(to facilitate permanent reference linking between publications) and
COUNTER (to provide comparable, audited web site usage statistics for the
library community).
 
For 2004, we have adjusted our site licence pricing, in recognition of
market trends. We have simplified customer size banding and consolidated
our discount structure, providing more flexible, customised pricing
solutions, and increasing discounts for customers licensing more Nature
journals.
 
To summarise, NPG will continue to invest in all our publications, and
those of our partner societies, to ensure the widest possible distribution
of high impact content, while offering value to authors, personal and
institutional subscribers, and all our readers around the world. We thank
you for your continued support.
 
Yours sincerely,
 
Annette Thomas
Managing Director
Nature Publishing Group
 
Visit http://www.nature.com for more information or http://npg.nature.com