Nature Publishing Group Open Letter to Customers, 2005

[npglibcomms@natureny.com]

*Apologies for any cross-posting*

Nature Publishing Group
15 September 2005

Dear customers,

I am pleased to be able to write once again with news of launches, 
acquisitions, and important technical and policy developments at Nature 
Publishing Group (NPG), reflecting the evolving needs of our customers.

With the launch of the Nature Clinical Practice (NCP) series in late 2004, 
NPG confirmed its position as a dynamic clinical publisher. The first four 
NCP titles, Cardiovascular Medicine, Gastroenterology & Hepatology, Oncology 
and Urology, provide time-short physicians with authoritative, timely 
overviews of how key developments can be applied in the clinical setting. The 
journals have already been indexed in PubMed. The next four titles in the 
series, launching November 2005, will be Endocrinology & Metabolism, 
Nephrology, Neurology, and Rheumatology. From January 2006, NPG will also 
publish the society-owned titles Kidney International and the Journal of 
Investigative Dermatology, both previously published by Blackwell Publishing.

The launch of Nature Materials in 2002 marked NPG's commitment to publishing 
in the physical sciences. The first issue of Nature Chemical Biology was 
published in June, and Nature Physics launches in October of this year. With 
these launches, NPG aims to provide high-impact, high-value publications, in 
line with the needs of authors and readers, expanding our long-standing 
service in the life sciences.

NPG's commitment to new and established journals is clear. Our publications 
continue to dominate the rankings in the Thomson ISI Journal Citation Report 
2004. Eleven of the top 25 science and technology journals are Nature 
journals, all of which have impact factors over 20. Nature is again the top 
Multidisciplinary Sciences, with an impact factor of 32.182. The Nature 
Reviews series, launched only five years ago, is still out-performing any 
comparable reviews series. Nature Reviews Cancer has an impact factor of 
36.557, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology is 33.170 and Nature Reviews 
Immunology is 32.695. Impact factors are not the sole indicator of quality, 
but these figures reflect relevant, novel content from the best authors, and 
high levels of usage by customers. The impact factor of Nature Materials, 
only three years old, has jumped to 13.531 and it is now the number one 
primary research journal in materials science.

These successes reflect our ongoing investments in our journals and our 
service to customers. In May, the print and web editions of Nature were 
relaunched, with a cleaner, more readable design and expanded content. This 
followed a year-long process of research, consultation, design and 
development. The new design and content have been warmly received by readers. 
The magazine goes from strength to strength, with exciting papers this year 
on the historic mission to Mars, and the inheritance of extra-genomic 
information. The web edition is now compliant with important web 
accessibility standards, to ensure our content is available to everyone, 
regardless of physical ability. Feedback from users deploying screen reader 
technology has been positive, but improved accessibility will benefit all 
users.

The nature.com homepage and subject pages have been redesigned to improve 
site navigation, allowing users to find relevant publications easily. In 
addition to new designs, NPG has completely rebuilt the nature.com publishing 
platform, with new hardware and software. Download times have been 
significantly reduced, and server downtimes have been eliminated as far as 
possible.

NPG has a tradition of innovation, with experimental publishing concepts such 
as AfCS-Nature Signaling Gateway, the JISC-funded open-source Urchin, the 
early adoption of RSS feeds, and now with the launch of Connotea. Connotea 
(www.connotea.org) allows users to bookmark, index and share important 
scientific papers and web pages. Through shared indexing, users can discover 
relevant material they might not have otherwise found.

Information about institutional subscriptions, site licenses and pricing is 
published at npg.nature.com/libraries
NPG's site license policy is established across most of our titles, and site 
licenses offer great value, both in terms of access to high impact research, 
and low cost per use. Early studies suggest NPG offers better value, in terms 
of cost-per-article downloaded than other major STM publishers (Credit Suisse 
First Boston Media; Evolving Threats to STM). Reflecting requests from our 
customers, the site license policy is being amended to provide clear 
post-cancellation rights to site license customers. All customers with a 
license start date in 2006 will be granted post-cancellation rights to the 
material they can access via their site license (ie back to 1997 or the 
subsequent launch issue). From 2007, the content accessible via a current 
site license will be redefined, and libraries will have post-cancellation 
access rights to content published during the term of their license, subject 
to a title-specific access fee.

To conclude, NPG will continue to invest in journals, increasing quality and 
impact, while innovating in new and established markets with novel products 
and services, inline with the needs of our customers. Publishers don't 
determine what will succeed and what will fail. You, as customers, do that, 
and we thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely

Annette Thomas
Managing Director
Nature Publishing Group

npg.nature.com/libraries