On Sat, 29 Jan 2000, Diana Deutsch wrote: > I just noticed that you listed Nature as a journal that does not have > embargo policies. However, they write in their Instructions to > Contributors that authors need to state with their submissions that the > work they report has not been disseminated in any way (for example, no > press releases). Recently I decided not to submit a recent finding to > Nature for publication, because the work had received considerable media > attention following a talk I gave at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of > America, and a lay-language version that the ASA (indeed a branch of the > enlightened AIP) posted for this meeting. > > I'd be grateful if you had any information about > Nature's 'real' policy on this.
It seems to me that based on Nature's own announced Embargo Policy <http://www.nature.com/author/embargo.html>, you had no reason not to submit it to Nature anyway: Nature does not wish to hinder communication between scientists. For that reason, different embargo guidelines apply to work that has been discussed at a conference or displayed on a preprint server and picked up by the media as a result. (Neither conferences nor preprint servers constitute prior publication.) Our guidelines for authors and potential authors in such circumstances are clear-cut in principle: communicate with other researchers as much as you wish, but do not encourage premature publication by discussion with the press (beyond your formal presentation, if at a conference). Science's policy is much more regressive insofar as online self-archiving of preprints is concerned, and that difference is crucial here: <http://www.sciencemag.org/misc/con-info.shtml#prior> Science will not consider any paper or component of a paper that has been published or is under consideration for publication elsewhere. Distribution on the Internet may be considered previously published material and may compromise the originality of the paper as a submission to Science. However, they too are reasonable when it comes to inadvertent press coverage of a conference by the media. In addition, the main findings of a paper should not have been reported in the mass media. Authors are, however, permitted to present their data at open meetings but should not overtly seek media attention. Specifically, authors should decline participation in news briefings or coverage in press releases and should refrain from giving interviews or copies of the figures or data from their presentation or from the manuscript to any reporter unless the reporter agrees to abide by Science's press embargo. If a reporter attends an author's session at a meeting and writes a story based only on the presentation, such coverage will not affect Science's consideration of the author's paper. I might add that I see nothing objectionable about Nature and Science's press embargos: Authors should not seek press coverage for unrefereed findings. But there is zero justification for trying to prevent the online self-archiving of unrefereed preprints for fellow-researchers. (And, a fortiori, less than zero justification for trying to prevent the online self-archiving of REFEREED reprints, which Science also does. I am not sure what Nature's current policy is on this.) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Stevan Harnad [email protected] Professor of Cognitive Science [email protected] Department of Electronics and phone: +44 23-80 592-582 Computer Science fax: +44 23-80 592-865 University of Southampton http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ Highfield, Southampton http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/ SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM NOTE: A complete archive of this ongoing discussion of "Freeing the Refereed Journal Literature Through Online Self-Archiving" is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
