From the press release:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) announced its newest journal last week: Scientific Reports. An online, open access, peer-reviewed publication, Scientific Reports will publish research covering the natural sciences – biology, chemistry, earth sciences and physics. The new journal has already begun to accept submissions, and expects to publish its first articles in June 2011.
See www.nature.com/scientificreports for more information.
The journal will be freely accessible to all Internet users, and the publishing model is based on article charges. The 2011 rate will be $1350 per accepted manuscript; authors may choose from multiple versions of Creative Commons licensing.
Scientific Reports will publish original research papers of interest to specialists within a given field in the natural sciences. It will not set a threshold of perceived importance for the papers that it publishes; rather, Scientific Reports will publish all papers that are judged to be technically valid and original. To enable the community to evaluate the importance of papers post-peer review, the Scientific Reports website will include most-downloaded, most-emailed, and most-blogged lists. All research papers will benefit from rapid peer review and publication, and will be deposited in PubMed Central.
“Our rationale is to provide authors with a choice of where to publish,” said Jason Wilde, Business Development Director at NPG. “Scientific Reports will leverage the tools, technology and experience of NPG, bringing this knowledge and insight to a broad-based, open access publication. Through increased competition and innovation, we hope to give authors great service, functionality and visibility for their research.”
Scientific Reports will be led by a team of 15 Editorial Advisory Panel members, supported by an editorial board who will make all editorial decisions. Unlike Nature Communications, Scientific Reports will not have in-house editors, and will not offer the developmental editing associated with previous Nature titles.
“This is a completely new venture for NPG,” says David Hoole, Director of Intellectual Property Policy and Licensing at NPG. “Scientific Reports adds to our growing portfolio of journals providing open access options, but until now NPG has not offered researchers an open access home for solid scientific research. We continue to see increasing commitment by research funders to cover the costs of open access, and interest from authors in this publishing route.” Scientific Reports joins more than 40 titles published by NPG offering an open access option.