Just got this email regarding
Nature Precedings.
Dear registrant:
As you are an active user of Nature Precedings, we want to let you know about some upcoming changes to this service. As of April 3rd 2012, we will cease to accept submissions to Nature Precedings. Submitted documents will be processed as usual and hosted provided they are uploaded by midnight on April 3rd. Nature Precedings will then be archived, and the archive will be maintained by NPG, while all hosted content will remain freely accessible to all.
Be assured that Nature and the Nature research journals continue to permit the posting of preprints and there is no change to this policy, which is detailed here.
Nature Precedings was launched in 2007 as NPG’s preprint server, primarily for the Life Science community. Since that date, we have learned a great deal from you about what types of content are valued as preprints, and which segments of the research community most embrace this form of publication. While a great experiment, technological advances and the needs of the research community have evolved since 2007 to the extent that the Nature Precedings site is unsustainable as it was originally conceived.
Looking forward, NPG remains committed to exploring ways to help researchers, funders, and institutions manage data and best practices in data management, and we plan to introduce new services in this area. We have truly valued your contributions as authors and users to Nature Precedings and hope that you will actively participate in this research and development with us.
Interestingly, there is no announcement at the Nature Precedings site itself. I assume the email I received is real (it really looks real) though you never know these days. It's too bad. I like the concept of a preprint server for biology. Interestingly, one of the alternatives to NP is
FigShare (which is pretty cool) which recently became part of the
Digital Science group which is a sister group to Nature. Hmm ... wonder what the conversations at joint tea parties between Nature and Digital Science group are like. Could be fun.
