Thursday, January 6, 2011

New Nature Open Access Journal - Scientific Reports

Nature Publishing Group (NPG) today announces the 2011 launch of Scientific Reports. An online, open access, peer-reviewed publication, Scientific Reports will publish research covering the natural sciences - biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics. Scientific Reports is accepting submissions from today, and will publish its first articles in June 2011. More information is available on the Scientific Reports website (www.nature.com/scientificreports).

All articles published in Scientific Reports will be open access and subject to an article-processing charge (APC). The 2011 APC rate will be US$1350/GB£890/ EURO1046 per accepted manuscript*. Authors will have a choice of two non-commercial Creative Commons (CC) licenses. NPG will make an annual donation to Creative Commons equivalent to $20 per APC paid for publication in Scientific Reports.** Authors of the research paper concerned will be eligible for complimentary membership of the Creative Commons network, an international online community of people who support open access and open educational resources.

Scientific Reports will publish original research papers of interest to specialists within a given field in the natural sciences. It will not set a threshold of perceived importance for the papers that it publishes; rather, Scientific Reports will publish all papers that are judged to be technically valid and original. To enable the community to evaluate the importance of papers post-peer review, the Scientific Reports website will include most-downloaded, most-emailed, and most-blogged lists. All research papers will benefit from rapid peer review and publication, and will be deposited in PubMed Central.

*Scientific Reports will offer a 20% discount on the APC for manuscripts accepted for publication before 31 December 2011. From January 2012, the APC will be US$1700/GB£1112/EURO1308

** Total annual donation from NPG will be up to $100,000

http://www.nature.com/press_releases/scientificreports.html

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Articles on Net Neutrality and Fair Use

Following are links to recent articles of interest on fair use and the December 21, 2010 action by the Federal Communications Commission on “net neutrality.”