Accra — Researchers from low- and lower-middle-income nations will now be capable to publish at no cost in Nature and 36 different Nature research journals, as the corporate expands its waiver insurance policies to incorporate its flagship titles.
Underneath open entry (OA) publishing, readers can entry revealed papers at no cost however researchers or their establishments should pay article processing expenses to get their manuscripts revealed.
Previously, it meant that scientists from low- and middle-income nations have been successfully excluded, as there’s little institutional help to cowl article processing expenses, which generally whole greater than their yearly salaries.
“[Article processing charges can be] equivalent to about two years’ salary of a full professor in Nigeria and many other African countries,” defined Segun Fatumo, an affiliate professor of genetic epidemiology and bioinformatics on the Medical Analysis Centre/Uganda Virus Analysis Institute.
“No wonder many scientific outputs of scientists from low- and middle-income countries end up in mediocre … predatory journals.”
Marcelo Aizen, a professor of ecology on the Nationwide College of Comahue in Argentina, agreed with Fatumo. He stated month-to-month salaries for prime scientists in Argentina spherical as much as about US$1,000, and annual grants spherical as much as US$3,000 so they’re merely not capable of afford the publication prices of most prestigious educational journals.
“In some cases, you can still negotiate a waiver, which in fact puts you in a quite humiliating position, but this is not even an option for many journals,” defined Aizen. “The whole scientific publication system is quite perverse when you think that we work for free for the publishers as authors, reviewers, and associate editors and that on top of that, we have to pay for publishing our work.”
Whereas Nature and different top-tier journals normally cost readers to entry analysis papers, Nature’s father or mother firm Springer Nature introduced in late 2020 that researchers would be capable to publish their manuscripts in the primary Nature journal and 32 different Nature journals below the so-called Gold OA mannequin, the place articles are freely accessible as quickly as they’re revealed.
But till the brand new waiver coverage, the primary journals weren’t included in Springer Nature’s present charge waiver programme for researchers from low- and middle-income nations, which solely coated full open-access journals resembling Nature Communications and Communications Physics.
Enabling free entry
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“We have done this because these journals are unique,” a spokesperson for the corporate defined. “It’s a particular provision to help a subset of authors and solely applies to our extremely selective Nature Portfolio transformative journals as they transition to OA.
“By enabling research to be permanently and freely available online for anyone to read, everyone has access to research that can inform our approaches to some of the world’s most pressing challenges,” the spokesperson added.
Among the many 37 journals included within the initiative are Nature Biotechnology, Nature Local weather, Nature Medication, Nature Sustainability and Nature Water, based on a press release revealed earlier this month (9 January).
Within the assertion, Deborah Candy, vice-president for the Nature Journals, stated: “I’m delighted that at Nature and the Nature Analysis Journals, we are actually capable of provide OA to researchers from the low- and lower-middle-income nations without charge to them.
“As part of Springer Nature, we are committed to supporting the transition to OA and a part of this is to ensure that authors from less well-funded countries who wish to publish OA in this unique portfolio of titles are able to do so.”
This piece was produced by SciDev.Web’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.
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