An Online Journal of the High Quality of Nature and Science

Shu-Kun Lin

Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI), Saengergasse 25, CH-4054 Basel, Switzerland. Tel. +41 79 322 3379, Fax +41 61 302 8918, E-mail: [email protected], http://www.mdpi.org/lin/

Received: 16 April 2000 / Accepted: 26 April 2000 / Published:

Natural Science (www.natsci.net) publishes scientific papers of exceptionally high quality like those in the prestigious journals Nature (www.nature.com) and Science (www.sciencemag.org). It maintains rigorous standards of peer-review, editorial independence and rapid publication. Yet it is a nonprofit international journal and is free for publication and free for online access [1]. How can it be possible?

Firstly I thought about a procedure similar to the PNAS (www.pnas.org) model of peer-review and editorial procedure. A manuscript considered for publication must be carefully reviewed by at least three scientists with the appropriate technical expertise. Among them at least one established or well respected scientist would like to release the name and openly support its publication. We will put a sentence reads "Communicated by Dr. Joe Smith ([email protected])" or "Edited by Dr. Joe Smith ([email protected])" or "Contributed by Dr. Joe Smith ([email protected]).

The papers will be published in both html and pdf forms in Natural Science. Once the papers are accepted, they will be immediately uploaded and released.

Because of their limited volumes, Nature and Science cannot publish all of the most important research works. Our Natural Science will supplement these two and other prestigious journals to satisfy the demand of rapid publication of all those significant scientific findings. We are also trying to collaborate with sveral prestigious journals to directly publish any papers accepted by them but could not be published timely becuase of their volume limitation. There will be no volume limit for Natural Science. There is no restriction on the length of the papers.

The unique feature of Natural Science will be enhanced by two searchable databases of Preprints.Net (a pre-publication service before or during the peer-reviewing process) and Reprints.Net (a post-publication service). Preprints.Net server will host preprints of significant research papers before their formal publications or during their peer-reviewing period. Reprints of the most important papers published here and in other high quality journals can be exchanged among scientists for academic research on the internet. Reprints.Net server will release searchable abstracts of these reprints with updated corrections, additions and other useful comments of the authors and readers.

How can this journal survive and grow? We will limit our cost on the very necessary editorial work and the production of the electronic files of paper with unified format. As a non-profit journal, its publication policy will require that the English and style of the accepted papers will be the responsibility of the authors. The authors can ask a colleague whose native language is English to correct English of the final, accepted version. We use a very simple style of layout so that authors can follow easily: there will be only one column in the layout, only one kind of font (Time or Times New Roman) and only one font size. It would be sustainable if the limited cost is covered by corporate sponsorships and the CD archive edition distribution.

With the experience of running Molecules for five years as a free and high quality online scientific journal and experience of running an interdisciplinary journal Entropy, I launch Natural Science as one more free online journal. I hope you can enjoy it both as a reader and as an author.

I am grateful to many colleagues in  the United States, in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, in China and Russia for their collaboration and assistance.

References and Notes

1. The website of Natural Science is Natural Science

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