Nature, a database filled with scientific research papers, announced Tuesday that it is taking a step towards open access, which will allow widespread article sharing with no costs.
This next step will allow the subscribers of the 49 journals published by the Nature Publishing Group and collected on Nature's website to share full read-only links to interesting research papers with non-subscribers.
About 100 media outlets will be permitted to share Nature's content this way as well.
The links will be read-only and cannot be downloaded, copied or printed. These journals under Macmillan's Nature Publishing Group (NPG) division will allow scientists to finally be able to read and share the articles they have published.
The shared read-only articles will be hosted by ReadCube, a software platform similar to iTunes.
Nature realizes this new open-sharing policy will put the company at a financial risk, but noted that researchers who are being published, or have already been published, want to share their work with others.
Timo Hannay, the managing director of Digital Science, a division of Macmillan that has invested in ReadCube, released a statement on the policy change:
"We know researchers are already sharing content, often in hidden corners of the Internet or using clumsy, time-consuming practices. At Digital Science we have the technology to provide a convenient, legitimate alternative that allows researchers to access the information they need and the wider, interested public access to scientific knowledge, from the definitive, original source," he said.
The new open-sharing policy is intended as a pilot program for the first year, Annette Thomas, chief executive of Macmillan Science and Education explained. Libraries and personal users are expected to continue subscribing to the journal, while scientists are expected to be taking advantage of the open-sharing policy.
