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Right. Nature is about as credible a source as you can get.

Note that this paper is from Nature: Scientific Reports, which is also published by Nature Publishing Group, but is not the Nature journal you're thinking of. SRep is not in the same tier as Nature.

Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm guessing that it's still a long way removed from "spam", though, right? :-)

Well, SR did have a bit of a credibility issue when they started, and even today, it's not exactly a top journal. I understand it's not a criterion that the articles published are groundbreaking or similar, just that they're decent science and that the authors are willing to pay the hefty fee.

Edit:

See here for one particular discussion, from last year

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/06/15/mor...

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