Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announces that its academic and society journals will be opening access to all online content published before January 2003
The archives will be accessible from January 2007.
This policy helps clarify content associated with a site license.
From January 2007, site license access to any NPG publication will include content from the current year plus a four-year rolling archive, with the exception of those journals which already offer an open archive after 12 months.
The decision to open the journal archives has been made jointly by NPG and by the societies for whom it publishes.
Making each journal's older content freely accessible will encourage wider usage.
The policy also helps to address the issue of perpetual access to archives of society-owned journals that transfer between publishers.
The society-owned NPG journals which already open their archives on a 12-month rolling basis are unaffected by this policy change.
For Nature journals, a site license starting in 2007 will include content from the current year plus a four-year rolling archive.
Archive content not included in the license agreement will be available to purchase.
However, site licenses starting in 2006 will have post-cancellation rights to all the current licensed content (eg, back to 1997).
NPG says it remains committed to publishing the highest impact research, with the widest possible readership.
