Thousands of machine learning scientists have said that they will boycott a new closed-access Nature journal in a row that illustrates unease over how publishers use prestigious brands to muscle in to new disciplines.

?have signed a petition declaring that they will not submit to, review or edit for Nature Machine Intelligence, set to launch in January 2019, which will charge subscription fees for access in a discipline where ¡°virtually all¡± publication outlets are open.?

Academics are concerned that the Nature brand could entice researchers away from open-access alternatives.

Christoph Lippert, head of a statistical genomics lab at the Max Delbr¨¹ck Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin, who has signed the petition, said that researchers in the field ¡°are not used to brand-name journals. In fact, no journal in the field has more than a single-digit impact factor,¡± he said, referring to a controversial measure of journal prestige based on average paper citation counts.

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¡°Nature has a long history in the natural sciences and is an important outlet that I do submit to regularly,¡±?he continued.?¡°However, in this case, Nature is trying to use its brand to capitalise in a field that?it has?not been interested in for a long time.¡±

Daniel Roy,?assistant professor of statistics?at the University of Toronto, added that there was ¡°concern¡± over the new journal because, in other fields, ¡°Nature plays an outsized role...[in] career decisions¡±.

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Aside from fears about open access, Dr Roy pointed out that there were long-standing concerns that Nature journals encourage ¡°flashy¡± articles about high-impact but very early stage work.

A Springer Nature spokeswoman argued that running highly selective Nature journals involved greater costs and that it was fairer ¡°to spread these costs among many readers [through subscription access] instead of having them borne by a few authors [through a pay-to-publish model]¡±.

The petition against Nature Machine Intelligence came?as its parent publisher, Springer Nature, prepared to float on the Frankfurt stock exchange on 9 May.

In a financial prospectus for investors, the company reveals how it uses journal brands and impact factors to charge academics ¡°premium¡± prices to publish and that ¡°brand strength is becoming increasingly important¡±.

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¡°Our open access portfolio includes a large number of leading brands, such as...Nature Communications, Scientific Reports and Springer Open, and high impact factor publications, positioning us well to command premium APCs [article processing charges, which pay for open access publication] from authors,¡± it says.

Asked about what determines APCs, the spokeswoman said that pricing ¡°varies...reflecting the work that goes in to publishing the articles and the added value services that we provide to the community¡±.

The prospectus also reassures investors that the most ¡°prestigious¡± journals will remain closed, and so the growth of open access will not ¡°cannibalise¡± subscription revenues.

Drawing on a report by the consultants OC&C, it says that closed journals ¡°remain the most prestigious type of publication measured by impact factor¡±, which means that libraries are ¡°incentivised to retain access¡±, limiting their ability to negotiate a lower price.

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The publisher¡¯s spokeswoman argued that ¡°the move to open access is complex and, for many, simply not a viable option¡±, for example because APCs were unaffordable in some regions.

Elsewhere in the prospectus, the publisher tells investors that academic publishing has ¡°significant barriers to entry¡± against competitors because a ¡°small number of leading academic publishers¡± control ¡°most¡± of the ¡°unique¡± research that is a ¡°must-have¡± for university libraries.

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david.matthews@timeshighereducation.com