The open access landscape has very few roadmaps to guide publishers. Numerous OA journals have launched in the past 6 months, each with different strategies, scopes, audiences, and business models. Join ACS Publications, Nature Publishing Group, and IEEE as they walk through the lessons learned from the process of launching OA journals at their respective organizations. The American Chemical Society's newest journal, ACS Central Science, is the ACS' first attempt at a purely open access journal that has no author fees or subscription fees. The challenges of launching a new publishing model with a new business model have been a vital learning experience as ACS enters this new frontier. VP of New Business Development, Dr. Kevin Davies, will walk through the journal launch process, the impact of shifting to an OA model, the business considerations, and successes/challenges to date in this interactive session. Dr. James Butcher, Associate Director for Open Publishing at Nature Publishing Group, oversees the development of Nature Communications and Scientific Reports and will share how his work with these two journals has challenged NPG to think in new ways about the future of publishing in an open access economy. IEEE's Karen Hawkins is Senior Director, Product Design and manages all new product introductions including IEEE's OA publishing. This panel will be moderated by John Mihalick of ACS Publications. Join them as they share their experiences. James Butcher, PhD Associate Director, Open Publishing, Nature Publishing Group

1. Hybrid journals at
Nature Publishing Group
NASIG
3rd May, 2014
James Butcher PhD
Associate Director
Open Publishing

2. 22
NPG and open access
2005: first fully OA title:
Molecular Systems Biology
2009-2011: all non-Nature journals
offer OA option (hybrid)
2010: Nature Communications
(hybrid journal)
2011: Scientific Reports
(fully OA)
2013: Frontiers (fully OA)

3. 3
Open access at NPG, Frontiers,
and Palgrave Macmillan
• NPG and Frontiers published 10,500 open access research papers in 2013, 51%
of their combined research publication output for the year.
• Nature Communications published ~1,600 articles in 2013; ~500 were OA.
• Scientific Reports published ~2,500 open-access articles in 2013, more than 3
times the 800 OA articles published in 2012.
• Scientific Data launches next month
• We offer open access options on all of our partner journals; 1,500 OA research
papers were published in 2013, a growth of 6% on 2012.
• In January 2013 Palgrave Macmillan announced open access options across 55 of
its 60 journals, all Palgrave Pivot ebooks and monographs.

4. 4
NPG does not “double dip”
• Nature Publishing Group has published its hybrid journal site license pricing policy.
• Under this policy, any price adjustments for 2015 (for example) are based on the year-
on-year change in subscription content published in 2012 and 2013.
• For example
• In 2012 Journal X publishes 100 subscription papers
• In 2013 Journal X starts to offer OA as hybrid option
• In 2013 Journal X publishes 80 subscription papers and 20 OA papers
• Therefore the price in 2015 would decrease by 20%
• However, at the request of our librarian panel, the price will not change unless the %
change (either up or down) is >10%

5. 5
Nature Communications
• Launched in April 2010
• Scope: all areas of the natural sciences
• Authors can choose subscription or OA at acceptance
• ~18% acceptance rate
• In-house editorial team
• Offers three Creative Commons licenses
– CC BY
– CC BY-NC-ND
– CC BY-NC-SA

6. 6
Submissions
• Received ~30,000 submissions since
launch 4 years ago
• The journal received ~1400
submissions in March 2013;
(Nature receives ~900 / month)
• ~33% of submissions were previously
considered at another Nature journal
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
1600
Oct-09 Jun-10 Feb-11 Oct-11 Jun-12 Feb-13 Oct-13

7. 7
The editorial team has grown…
2 years ago…

8. 8
The editorial team has grown…
Hiring Hiring Hiring Hiring Hiring

9. 9
Publications
• Published 701 papers in 2012
• Published ~1600 papers in 2013, of
which ~500 were OA
• The 16 Nature Research Journals
publish ~2100 papers / year
• 53% biology
• 33% physics
• 11% chemistry
• 3% earth and environmental sciences
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
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160
180
Apr-10 Nov-10 Jun-11 Jan-12 Aug-12 Mar-13 Oct-13
Biology
Chemistry
Earth
Physics

10. 10
Open access uptake
• In 2012, 41% of authors chose OA
• In 2013, 31% of authors chose OA
• OA uptake rate varies by subject.
In 2013:
– 39% of biologists chose OA
– 34% of physicists chose OA
– 23% of earth scientists chose OA
– 22% of chemists chose OA
• We started to offer CC BY in April, 2013
• Since then, ~25% of OA authors have
chosen CC BY
• The uptake of CC BY-NC-ND has not
changed; it looks as though some of the
CC BY-NC-SA authors have moved to
CC BY
• 1/3rd of authors choose the most restrictive
license
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Apr-10 Feb-11 Dec-11 Oct-12 Aug-13
CC BY
CC BY-NC-SA
CC BY-NC-ND

11. 11
Metrics
Web traffic
• 5.5m page views in 2012
• 11.3m page views in 2013
Impact factor
• The 2012 impact factor is 10.015
• ~150 journals (out of 8500) have an IF >10
0
200,000
400,000
600,000
800,000
1,000,000
1,200,000
1,400,000
1,600,000
1,800,000
Apr-10
Aug-10
Dec-10
Apr-11
Aug-11
Dec-11
Apr-12
Aug-12
Dec-12
Apr-13
Aug-13
Dec-13

12. 12
Unique data set
• Are open access articles cited more than subscription articles?
• Does this vary by subject area?
• Are open access articles viewed more than subscription articles?
• Is there a correlation between page views and citations? Does OA affect this?
• How does open access status affect altmetrics?