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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