All That Matters

There are some exciting news concerning Nature Communications (where I am the Deputy Editor): it has been announced today that in a few weeks, on 20 October 2014, the journal will become fully open access – becoming the first Nature-branded open access journal. What this means is that any manuscript submitted after that date will be published under an open access licence, subject to an article processing charge. Papers published earlier retain their existing licence, and authors of papers under consideration prior to that date will still have a choice between the subscription and open access model. Regardless, from 20 October 2014 onwards the journal will make a transition to become fully open access. More details can be found in the related press release.

The default licence choice for these articles will be Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0. Although other licence types are available upon request for the same article processing charge, the CC-BY licence is the preferred licence type by many funding agencies and supporters of the open access model. It is also the licence under which this blog is published.

All in all, I believe this is a fantastic step for open access publishing, and am really excited to see this transition. Building on the existing success of the journal, it establishes Nature Communications as Nature’s flagship multidisciplinary open access journal!

Interested in a career with one of the top journals in science publishing? Nature Communications is going through a phase of intense growth, and we are now recruiting an editor to join my team in the physical sciences. This is an exciting career opportunity. To me, reading up on exciting scientific discoveries on a daily basis, and being able to discuss these with scientists in the field, is a huge privilege and motivation.

As for this particular position, the ideal candidate should have a background in any area of physics. As the job advert states, a broad scientific knowledge and training, excellent literary skills and a keen interest in the practice and communication of science are important, as are excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

To apply, please do so via our recruitment web site below. Closing date is July 9th.

http://jobs.macmillan.com/VacancyDetail.aspx?VacancyUID=000000003029

Please note that the position is based in London, and we do require a pre-existing work permit for the UK.

In case you have further questions, please feel free to contact me at any time.

The purpose of the editorial process at scientific journals is to select the papers that fit the editorial scope of the journal, and – within the limited means of the review scheme – try to make sure that published papers are technically correct and a fair representation of the scientific results presented. For most modern scientific journals, peer review has been a crucial element of this process: manuscripts are evaluated by other scientists (peers), who then send their assessment of the work to the editor. If these comments are passed on to the authors, it is anonymously. The authors won’t know who reviewed their manuscript. […]