Nature is one of the most prestigious of all scientific journals, and publishers of the periodical have announced articles will now be available to the public for free, delighting scientists and researchers worldwide.
Dark sharing allows scientists to share articles that are normally available just to paying subscribers. Researchers simply download a .PDF version of an article, then email it to people, or place the document in an online folder, where it can be read by colleagues, students, and other people.
Publishers of Nature and other publications want to be able to track the number of people who access articles. Dark sharing does not allow publishers to measure the popularity of pieces, hampering efforts to inform libraries and authors about readership.
The Nature Publishing Group (NPG), owned by Macmillan Publishers, has launched the one-year trial plan to manage the spread of publications. They will allow subscribers to send a link from online articles to anyone, allowing non-subscribers to access a read-only version of the journal article. This link will be anonymous, hiding both the title of the article, as well as the sender.
"We have, over many decades, published a wealth of world-leading scientific knowledge through our family of journals. Today we are able to present a new way to conveniently share and disseminate this knowledge using technology from one of our innovative and disruptive divisions - Digital Science - to provide a real solution to the global problem of how to efficiently and legitimately share scientific research for the benefit of all," Annette Thomas, CEO of Macmillan Science and Education, said.
ReadCube will be used to deliver the articles online to viewers. Articles delivered in this format cannot be downloaded or printed by readers who have not subscribed to Nature. However, anyone who registers with ReadCube can save documents for later viewing. Customized notes may also be placed in articles by the original sender, allowing for commenting.
Nature has been published since 1869. The new announcement also applies to all 49 publications in the NPG group. These include Nature Physics, Nature Genetics, and Nature Medicine.
A select group of 100 media outlets and science blogs will be chosen by management at NPG to offer their readers the same access to read-only versions of full articles.
This decision "marks an attempt to let scientists freely read and share articles while preserving NPG's primary source of income - the subscription fees libraries and individuals pay to gain access to articles," Nature Publishing Group stated.
A sample of free read-only access to Nature is available on the ReadCube Web site.
