Researchers based in 70 low- and middle-income countries located in regions such as Africa, Asia, and the Middle East will now have the opportunity to have their primary research published in Nature as Gold Open Access, which means that it will be permanently and freely available online for anyone to read. This initiative is aimed at promoting equal access to information and research for all and encouraging scientific collaboration and advancements globally.
Springer Nature announced earlier in January that financial support, via a dedicated fund, has been made available to support authors from 70 countries classified by the World Bank as low-income or lower-middle-income to help them have their research published open access in Nature and the Nature-branded journals.
This move recognises that local funding is rarely available for publishing OA in specialist journals like Nature, whose characteristics such as in-house editorial teams and low acceptance rates make it difficult for authors from these countries who are less well-funded.
Deborah Sweet, Vice President for the Nature Journals,said
“I am delighted that at Nature and the Nature Research Journals we are now able to offer Open Access to researchers from the low and lower middle income countries at no cost 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 are able to do so.”
A key part of this initiative is that authors will not need to ask to benefit from the support. Corresponding authors from qualifying countries whose primary research papers are accepted in principle (AIP) for publication in these titles will be informed as part of the publishing process that their paper will be published gold OA, with the Article Publishing Cost (APC) covered by Springer Nature. Authors can opt out if they do not wish their papers to be published OA.
Open Access encourages open science and collaboration by making research accessible to the largest audience possible. With this move, SpringerNature is advancing the cause of more equal research publishing and increased worldwide access to scientific knowledge.
Photo credit : Nature
Article by RB reporter
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