Hybrid journals at
Nature Publishing Group
COASP
19th September, 2013
James Butcher PhD
Associate Director
Open Publishing
OA at NPG
• 61 NPG journals are fully OA or have an OA option
– NPG will publish ~5000 OA papers in 2013 (not including Frontiers)
• 46 are hybrid OA journals
– ~1300 OA articles in 2013
• ~800 will be published in 45 journals (~5% uptake)
• ~500 will be published in Nature Communications (~30% uptake)
• 15 journals are fully OA
– ~3700 OA articles in 2013
• ~1200 in 14 specialist fully OA journals
• ~2500 in Scientific Reports
2
Nature Communications
• Launched in April 2010
• Scope: all areas of the natural sciences
• Authors can choose subscription or OA at acceptance
• ~20% accept rate
• In-house editorial team
• Offers three Creative Commons licenses
– CC BY ($5200)
– CC BY-NC-ND ($4800)
– CC BY-NC-SA ($4800)
3
Submissions
• Received ~20,000 submissions since
launch
1400
1200
• The journal received ~1200
submissions in August 2013;
(Nature receives ~900 / month)
1000
800
• ~33% of submissions were previously
considered at another Nature journal
600
400
200
0
Jan-11
4
Jul-11
Jan-12
Jul-12
Jan-13
Jul-13
The editorial team has grown…
18 months ago…
5
The editorial team has grown…
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hiring
Hiring
Hiring
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hired
Hiring
Hiring
Hiring
6
Publications
•
•
•
•
• Published 701 papers in 2012
• Expect to publish ~1600 papers in
2013, of which ~500 will be OA
• In 2012, the 16 Nature Research
Journals published ~2100 papers
53% biology
33% physics
11% chemistry
3% earth and environmental sciences
180
160
Biology
Chemistry
Earth
Physics
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Apr-10
Nov-10
Jun-11
Jan-12
Aug-12 Mar-13
Oct-13
7
OA uptake rate
• 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
100%
100%
90%
90%
80%
80%
70%
70%
Biology
60%
60%
Physics
50%
50%
Earth
40%
40%
Chemistry
30%
30%
20%
20%
10%
10%
0%
Apr-10
Nov-10
Jun-11
Jan-12
Aug-12
Mar-13
0%
Oct-13
8
Licenses
OASPA membership
•
•
•
•
• NPG does not qualify for membership of
OASPA because we offer SA and ND
licenses on all our OA journals.
• However, 75% of our authors choose these
licenses.
• Should publishing companies dictate license
terms to authors?
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
35% of authors choose the most restrictive
license
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Apr-10
CC BY
CC BY-NC-SA
CC BY-NC-ND
Jan-11
Oct-11
Jul-12
Apr-13
9
An aside: license choice
(Scientific Reports)
June 2011 – July 2012
• Published 618 papers
• 72% were CC-BY-NC-SA
• 28% were CC-BY-NC-ND
1 July 2012 – 7 Nov 2012
• We started to offer CC-BY on July 1
• Published ~230 papers
• Order of the license on the form was:
– SA
– ND
– BY
Next 3 weeks
• Changed the order on the form to:
– ND
– SA
– BY
• 36 authors chose a license in the
following 3 week period:
• Were more authors choosing ND
because it was the middle option?
CC BY-NC-ND
CC BY-NC-SA
10
CC BY
CC BY
CC BY-NC-ND
CC BY-NC-ND
CC BY-NC-SA
CC BY-NC-SA
Metrics
Impact factor
Web traffic
• The 2012 impact factor is 10.015
• ~150 journals (out of 8500) have an IF >10
• 5.5m page views in 2012
• 7.2m page views in Jan to Aug 2013
1,200,000
1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000
200,000
Oct-13
Jul-13
Apr-13
Jan-13
Oct-12
Jul-12
Apr-12
Jan-12
Oct-11
Jul-11
Apr-11
Jan-11
Oct-10
Jul-10
Apr-10
0
11
Unanswered questions
• 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?
• We are looking for a statistician to independently analyse this data set.
Recommendations welcome.
12
NPG does not “double dip”
• Nature Publishing Group has published its hybrid journal site license pricing policy.
• Under this policy, any price adjustments for 2014 (for example) are based on the yearon-year change in subscription content published in 2011 and 2012.
• For example
• In 2011 Journal X publishes 100 subscription papers
• In 2012 Journal X starts to offer OA as hybrid option
• In 2012 Journal X publishes 80 subscription papers and 20 OA papers
• Therefore the price in 2014 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%
13