In the context of scientific publishing, Open Access is the model through which an article is made freely available to all, the costs typically being offset by a one-off payment from the author's funding body or institution. Open Access in one form or another is increasingly required by funders of research. The Nutrition Society wishes to make more papers available to readers through Open Access, which is available in its flagship journal the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN). However, only a minority of articles published in the BJN are Open Access. Therefore, in collaboration with the publishers of the BJN, Cambridge University Press, the Society has launched a new journal, Journal of Nutritional Science (JNS) (http://www.nutritionsociety.org/journal-nutritional-science). JNS will be published only online and will be fully Open Access. Under Open Access, upon acceptance of a paper the authors pay a one-off processing fee. This fee, which can often be covered by a funding body or host institution, covers the cost of reviewing, producing, hosting and archiving the article (in the existing publishing model, these costs are covered by the subscribers). Immediately upon publication, articles in JNS will be made freely accessible online in perpetuity and will automatically be deposited in PubMed Central on the authors' behalf, ensuring visibility and citability throughout the community. JNS shares its scope with BJN and the two journals will be closely linked, initially sharing Editorial Boards. Articles published in JNS will have been fully peer-reviewed. JNS will publish high-quality research articles across the full spectrum of nutritional science including public health nutrition, nutritional epidemiology, dietary surveys, nutritional requirements, metabolic studies, body composition, energetics, appetite, obesity, and nutritional aspects of ageing, endocrinology, immunology, neuroscience, microbiology, genetics and molecular and cell biology. The underlying aim of all work should be, as far as possible, to develop nutritional concepts. Articles may be submitted to JNS at http://jnutsci.msubmit.net/cgi-bin/main.plex. The launch of JNS represents an exciting development for the Nutrition Society, authors and researchers in nutritional science. I am certain that JNS will be welcomed by all and I wish it success.
Some of the content of this editorial is shared with the editorial ‘BJN gets a new sister!’ published in the British Journal of Nutrition (Reference Calder1).