Sci­en­tific pub­lisher Nature Pub­lish­ing Group (NPG), UK, is ini­ti­at­ing a free ser­vice to help authors ful­fil fun­der and insti­tu­tional man­dates. The ser­vice, slated for launch later this year, will ini­tially be open to authors pub­lish­ing orig­i­nal research arti­cles in Nature, the Nature research titles and the clin­i­cal research sec­tion of Nature Clin­i­cal Prac­tice Car­dio­vas­cu­lar Med­i­cine. NPG will then extend the ser­vice to soci­ety and aca­d­e­mic jour­nals in its port­fo­lio that wish to participate.

The pub­lisher has encour­aged self-archiving, includ­ing in PubMed Cen­tral, since 2005. Later this year, NPG will begin deposit­ing authors’ accepted man­u­scripts with PubMed Cen­tral (PMC) and UK PubMed Cen­tral (UKPMC), meet­ing the require­ments for authors funded by the Howard Hughes Med­ical Insti­tute (HHMI), the National Insti­tutes of Health (NIH), The Well­come Trust, the Med­ical Research Coun­cil and a num­ber of other major fun­ders in the US, the UK and Canada who man­date depo­si­tion in either PMC or UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the ser­vice to other archives and repos­i­to­ries in future.

For eli­gi­ble authors who opt-in dur­ing the sub­mis­sion process, NPG will deposit the accepted ver­sion of the author’s man­u­script on accep­tance, set­ting a pub­lic release date of 6-months post-publication. There will be no charge to authors or fun­ders for the service.

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