Statement from the Nature Publishing Groups (NPG) reads, ‘all research papers from Nature will be made free to read in a proprietary screen-view format that can be annotated but not copied, printed or downloaded.’ This NPG content sharing policy affects 48 journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group division. This policy gives readers free (read-only) access to major journals including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics. By disallowing coping, downloading and printing, NPG preserves its major source of revenue which is subscription fees from libraries and individuals.

The Nature Publishing Group will be using ReadCube to display the PDF files of those journals. Through ReadCube, institutions get access to all articles published by NPG since 1869. Individuals, though, will be able to read articles published since1997.

Open access movement and awareness are growing. Many countries and institutions are mandating researchers to publish their research output on open access platforms. This NPG policy comes as a result of growing pressure on major publishers like NPG which are founded on subscription based publishing model. Even before NPG announced this measure, it has made 38% of its articles open access through Gold Open Access model.

The measure taken by NPG has created mixed reactions. Most open access advocates appreciates the move. Nonetheless, they believe that NPG fall short on major issues such as giving access to coping and downloading- which are major parameters of genuine open access publishing. Critics of the policy think that NPG has adopted this policy from public relations perspective, not from true intensions of embracing open access publishing model. sourceNature