Nature Japan KK along with NPG offices in Hong Kong and Melbourne have merged to become NPG Nature Asia-Pacific, handling editorial, marketing, sales, print and web production for the region
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced plans to transform its representative company in Japan into the hub of a scientific, technical and medical publishing powerhouse in the Asia-Pacific region, with several major new initiatives already in development.
Nature Japan KK along with NPG offices in Hong Kong and Melbourne, Australia, have now merged to become NPG Nature Asia-Pacific, handling editorial, marketing, sales, print and web production for the Group in the region.
This new organisation will develop the Nature brand in the Asia-Pacific, as well as developing society-owned publications and creating a new custom publishing service.
2006 marks the first placement of Nature journal editors in the Asia-Pacific region, in response to the growing output of high quality research.
Editors of two new Nature-branded primary research journals, Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Photonics, will be located in Tokyo to help the region's researchers in these disciplines publish their best research.
For Nature Photonics, this will extend to the editor-in-chief and the core editorial staff.
It is anticipated that more editors will follow in Japan and in China.
In a major new initiative, NPG Nature Asia-Pacific will partner with scientific societies in producing high-quality journals.
From January 2006, NPG will partner with the Shanghai Institutes for Biosciences (Sibs) to publish its premier journal Cell Research, which has the highest impact factor of all life science and medical journals in China.
Also in 2006, NPG Nature Asia-Pacific will produce a quarterly Japanese translation of Kidney International.
This move coincides with NPG taking over publication of Kidney International, on behalf of the International Society of Nephrology.
Further top journals from the region will join the programme shortly.
NPG Nature Asia-Pacific will also be launching a new custom publishing service to help institutions in the Asia-Pacific region raise their profile and awareness of their best research.
The first contract will be signed shortly.
"Scientific research in Japan, Korea and China is really making heads turn," said David Swinbanks, NPG publishing director in charge of the new strategy.
"With science in the region moving ahead so quickly, we have to move forward as well".
Swinbanks recently returned to Tokyo to implement the new strategy after a four-year stay in London.
Nature Japan KK was established in 1987 with three staff built around an editorial news bureau for Nature set up in 1984.
It has since grown to 30 staff focused primarily on marketing and sales operations and contributes a significant portion of NPG's global turnover.
In addition to covering news for Nature, the company now produces Japanese pages for the Japan edition of Nature, a Japanese monthly supplement for Nature, Nature Digest, Chinese pages for the China edition of Nature and Japanese pages for several Nature research journals as well websites in Japanese, Chinese and Korean.
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities.
NPG's flagship title, Nature, is the world's most highly-cited weekly multidisciplinary journal and was first published in 1869.
Other publications and services include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews, Nature Clinical Practice, a range of prestigious academic journals, including society-owned publications, news content and scientific career information from Naturejobs.
NPG is a global company, with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Gurgaon, and Basingstoke.
