Nature Research has long been a supporter of self-archiving, having actively encouraged authors to do so since 2005 when the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) first requested authors to make a voluntary deposit in PubMed Central.
Nature Research's License to Publish encourages authors of original research articles to self-archive the accepted version of their manuscript in PubMed Central or other appropriate funding body's archive; their institution's repositories; and, if they wish, on their personal websites. In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after publication.
Nature Research has not required authors of original research articles to transfer copyright since 2002. Our policies are explained in detail on the License to Publish page.
Manuscript Deposition Service
In July 2008, Nature Research launched the first phase of its Manuscript Deposition Service. The free service helps authors fulfil funder and institutional mandates.
Several funding bodies and institutions have introduced mandates that require authors to self-archive articles in publicly accessible archives. While these mandates apply to authors, not publishers, Nature Research is committed to providing an excellent service to our authors at every stage of their publishing experience. It seemed a natural extension of Nature Research's self-archiving policy to offer a service to authors to do this on their behalf.
Nature Research's Manuscript Deposition Service is now available to authors publishing original research articles in Nature, the Nature research titles and many of the society and academic journals published by Nature Research. We continue to work to make the service available to authors publishing original research articles in the remainder of its society and academic journals.
Our Manuscript Deposition Service enables authors to meet the open access or public access policies of all of the participating funders, making it simple and free for researchers to comply.