Nature journal’s plan to fast track paper for a fee prompts resignation from editorial board

BMJ 2015; 350 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h1761 (Published 31 March 2015) Cite this as: BMJ 2015;350:h176

 A plan by one of Nature Publishing Group’s journals to expedite peer review if authors paid a fee has sparked a resignation from the journal’s editorial board and support for the stand from other academics.

Mark Maslin, professor of biogeography at University College London, announced his resignation from the editorial board of the open journal Scientific Reports by Twitter on 26 March. He was one of many board members told of the plan by the publisher last week in a letter from Nandita Quaderi, the group’s publishing director for open research.

Quaderi’s letter explained that “a selection of authors” submitting a biology manuscript to the journal would be given the option of fast review, which would be provided by a company called Research Square, based in Durham, North Carolina