Springer Nature * Journals

[WeedInTheWheat]

I have been seeing adds for  new journals with the "Nature" tag, think "Springer Nature Basketweaving." There are a few papers in the hopper that I was considering sending out to top basketweaving journals, but I am now a bit conflicted. While the SN journal does not have a history, it does have the name appeal that might appeal to folks outside of my discipline (something that would be helpful for an upcoming promotion bid). Also, the editorial board looks strong (and massive). But is this just an overreach by Springer that will water down the Nature brand? Are the discipline specific SN journals respected in your field? If so, how long did it take for that to happen?

[Puget]

I'm only familiar with Nature Neuroscience, but that has a massive impact factor and is certainly well-respected. It's been around for twenty something years though.

[youllneverwalkalone]

I have been seeing adds for  new journals with the "Nature" tag, think "Springer Nature Basketweaving." There are a few papers in the hopper that I was considering sending out to top basketweaving journals, but I am now a bit conflicted. While the SN journal does not have a history, it does have the name appeal that might appeal to folks outside of my discipline (something that would be helpful for an upcoming promotion bid). Also, the editorial board looks strong (and massive). But is this just an overreach by Springer that will water down the Nature brand? Are the discipline specific SN journals respected in your field? If so, how long did it take for that to happen?

Some Nature subjournals (e.g. Nature Genetics) have sinilar and at times hugher IF than even their flagship journal. I am not sure how long it took for that to happen, but I am guessing pretty fast due to having "Nature" in their title. Actually, they have just launched a Nature jourbal in my field, this thread reminded me I should keep an eye on that.

[mythbuster]

Nature has their own publishing group (NPG), which includes really high impact factor journals like Nature, Nature medicine, etc. They have also branched out to include Scientific Reports, which is their equivalent to PLOS One. Sometimes it's listed as Nature Scientific Reports by folks who REALLY want you to know that it's an NPG journal. The NPG website has really detailed info on all the journals and IFs for each one.
   Now I just checked the Springer web site thinking they were a separate entity, but they aren't. The encompass the Nature journals as well it appears. So they may have merged?

[Kron3007]

As much as I hate chasing impact facts etc., the nature moniker definitely has an impact on perceived quality.  I was just looking at Google Scholars' 2019 index and even scientific reports, which as mentioned is analogous to PLoS One and not consider perceived "impact", was ranked number 35. This is pretty high for a journal that claims not to be screening based on impact, and can only be explained by the relationship with Nature. 

[namazu]

Now I just checked the Springer web site thinking they were a separate entity, but they aren't. The encompass the Nature journals as well it appears. So they may have merged?

Yep. "Springer Nature is an academic publishing company created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media and Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macmillan Education."

[Juvenal]

I suppose I can "second 'Nature'."  As a subscriber to the main journal, "Nature," I can think of no reason that any "Nature" affiliation would be sketchy. 

But they are in the business of making money, so... well, "your move."

[Kron3007]

I suppose I can "second 'Nature'."  As a subscriber to the main journal, "Nature," I can think of no reason that any "Nature" affiliation would be sketchy. 

But they are in the business of making money, so... well, "your move."

At one point they had what was called "nature Pre-cedings, which was a place to "publish" work before it was peer reviewed.  The problem was that they were to be cited the same as a peer reviewed journal, so on someone's CV it gave the appearance of a nature publication, and precedings looks a lot like proceedings at first look.  I remember seeing a CV with all of these nature "publications".  Given the person in question is seemed unbelievable, so I dug deeper and figured out what was going on.  The person in question would have been better off just having one or two, where I would likely have been impressed and not looked into it more...

Regardless, this was definitely sketchy.  I think they were experimenting with the pre-peer reviewed publication model, but ended it in 2012. 

[Kron3007]

For what it's worth, I personally think these journals and the endless persuite of impact are a real problem in the academic world.  I think Randy Schekman is right on the money.  If you are not familiar, look him up.  Some interesting perspective.

[onthefringe]

As much as I hate chasing impact facts etc., the nature moniker definitely has an impact on perceived quality.  I was just looking at Google Scholars' 2019 index and even scientific reports, which as mentioned is analogous to PLoS One and not consider perceived "impact", was ranked number 35. This is pretty high for a journal that claims not to be screening based on impact, and can only be explained by the relationship with Nature.

I think there is still residual confusion about whether Scientific reports is analogous to PLOS one or a "real" Nature journal, which is inflating its recognition. If you look at its impact factor (which I acknowledge is problematic) it debuted at about 5 and in four years has dropped to a bit above 4. This is similar to what happened with PLOS one which had an IF of 5.5 in 2009, 4.5 four years later, and currently hovers around 2.

At one point they had what was called "nature Pre-cedings, which was a place to "publish" work before it was peer reviewed.  The problem was that they were to be cited the same as a peer reviewed journal, so on someone's CV it gave the appearance of a nature publication, and precedings looks a lot like proceedings at first look.  (snip)

Regardless, this was definitely sketchy.  I think they were experimenting with the pre-peer reviewed publication model, but ended it in 2012. 

The Nature preprint server no longer takes new papers, but PeerJ preprints and bioRxiv seem to be doing just fine. I think a lot of people are starting to view preprints as a way to stake out priority. And people use them to show that their papers "in preparation" are real when they are doing things like going on the job market, seeking a promotion, or submitting a grant.

Personally, I'd rather see a preprint on a CV than an "in prep" notation (but I think that either should be set apart in a clearly labeled section, not mixed in woth peer reviewed pubs.)

[fast_and_bulbous]

For what it's worth, I personally think these journals and the endless persuite of impact are a real problem in the academic world.  I think Randy Schekman is right on the money.  If you are not familiar, look him up.  Some interesting perspective.

Agreed entirely. In my field the journals that "count" have impact factors around 3. These are the ones that have been around for more than a hundred years, are sponsored by the field's society, etc. For some, they are the *only* journals that matter. Publishing in adjacent journals with similar or even higher IFs might hurt you in the long run (the right people might not read it).

As flawed as IF is, it at least usually tells you if a journal is crap... anything below 1 or so tells me not to bother. I wonder whether others feel this way. I once agonized over a promotion case where the articles involved journals with sub-1 IFs and some that didn't even have an IF. It's one of those things where if the IF is sufficiently high, it doesn't draw negative attention, but if it isn't, it does, regardless of whether the target journal is truly the right target for reasons of scope, mission, etc.

These days I plug in keywords into google that alert me to articles I might be interested in, and get emails when there are hits. This has broadened my scope quite a bit - I am reading from journals I didn't even know existed beforehand. I haven't found anything super surprising or important this way, but it does at least give a broader view of the field.

[phattangent]

[...] These days I plug in keywords into google that alert me to articles I might be interested in, and get emails when there are hits. This has broadened my scope quite a bit - I am reading from journals I didn't even know existed beforehand. [...]

I've had success with Google Scholar notifications on keywords related to what I'm interested in and/or researching.

[Kron3007]

As much as I hate chasing impact facts etc., the nature moniker definitely has an impact on perceived quality.  I was just looking at Google Scholars' 2019 index and even scientific reports, which as mentioned is analogous to PLoS One and not consider perceived "impact", was ranked number 35. This is pretty high for a journal that claims not to be screening based on impact, and can only be explained by the relationship with Nature.

I think there is still residual confusion about whether Scientific reports is analogous to PLOS one or a "real" Nature journal, which is inflating its recognition. If you look at its impact factor (which I acknowledge is problematic) it debuted at about 5 and in four years has dropped to a bit above 4. This is similar to what happened with PLOS one which had an IF of 5.5 in 2009, 4.5 four years later, and currently hovers around 2.

At one point they had what was called "nature Pre-cedings, which was a place to "publish" work before it was peer reviewed.  The problem was that they were to be cited the same as a peer reviewed journal, so on someone's CV it gave the appearance of a nature publication, and precedings looks a lot like proceedings at first look.  (snip)

Regardless, this was definitely sketchy.  I think they were experimenting with the pre-peer reviewed publication model, but ended it in 2012. 

The Nature preprint server no longer takes new papers, but PeerJ preprints and bioRxiv seem to be doing just fine. I think a lot of people are starting to view preprints as a way to stake out priority. And people use them to show that their papers "in preparation" are real when they are doing things like going on the job market, seeking a promotion, or submitting a grant.

Personally, I'd rather see a preprint on a CV than an "in prep" notation (but I think that either should be set apart in a clearly labeled section, not mixed in woth peer reviewed pubs.)

I am not against pre-prints, I was just against having them listed in publications and this one in particular had the nature name attached.  If they are listed separately and clearly, I see some value, although I do not do this myself.

[Kron3007]

For what it's worth, I personally think these journals and the endless persuite of impact are a real problem in the academic world.  I think Randy Schekman is right on the money.  If you are not familiar, look him up.  Some interesting perspective.

Agreed entirely. In my field the journals that "count" have impact factors around 3. These are the ones that have been around for more than a hundred years, are sponsored by the field's society, etc. For some, they are the *only* journals that matter. Publishing in adjacent journals with similar or even higher IFs might hurt you in the long run (the right people might not read it).

As flawed as IF is, it at least usually tells you if a journal is crap... anything below 1 or so tells me not to bother. I wonder whether others feel this way. I once agonized over a promotion case where the articles involved journals with sub-1 IFs and some that didn't even have an IF. It's one of those things where if the IF is sufficiently high, it doesn't draw negative attention, but if it isn't, it does, regardless of whether the target journal is truly the right target for reasons of scope, mission, etc.

These days I plug in keywords into google that alert me to articles I might be interested in, and get emails when there are hits. This has broadened my scope quite a bit - I am reading from journals I didn't even know existed beforehand. I haven't found anything super surprising or important this way, but it does at least give a broader view of the field.

My main society publishes a journal with an IF that hovers around 1 or so.  Unfortunately, this leads to everyone in our society sending their "good" papers out to higher IF journals, which only deflates our journal's IF.  It's not that the papers in this journal are low quality, the standards are pretty good, but the papers they get tend to be more routine because of this.  Then I see everyone trying to game the IF (encouraging review papers etc.).  The whole situation is problematic IMO.

That being said, I find disciplinary journals a little less relevant these days with search engines etc.  I very rarely search for articles by going to journals, nor do I routinely read through their ToC.  Instead, I rely mostly on google scholar to find relevant articles.  I have also come across quite a few recently as recommendations in research gate.

I really like the PLoS one model, where article level metrics are provided and the journal name is less of a thing.