期刊缩写       NATURE

期刊全称       NATURE 《自然》

期刊ISSN      0028-0836

2013-2014最新影响因子     42.351

期刊官方网站       http://www.xmnature.com/en/about.aspx

期刊投稿网址       http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html

通讯方式       NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP, MACMILLAN BUILDING, 4 CRINAN ST, LONDON, ENGLAND, N1 9XW

涉及的研究方向    综合性期刊-综合性期刊

出版国家       ENGLAND

出版周期       Weekly

出版年份       1869

年文章数       857

 

 

英国《Nature》期刊简介

    　　英国《Nature》创刊于1869年，由英国Nature Publishing Group出版，Nature Publishing Group出版隶属于Macmillan Group出版社公司。Nature NPG（Nature Publishing Group）诞生于1999年。

    　　英国著名杂志《Nature》是世界上最早的国际性科技期刊，自从创刊以来，始终如一地报道和评论全球科技领域里最重要的突破。其办刊宗旨是"将科学发现的重要结果介绍给公众，让公众尽早知道全世界自然知识的每一分支中取得的所有进展"。影响因子稳定在30以上，其系列月刊杂志的影响因子也相当高，基本代表了学术最高水平。《Nature》以长篇论文（即"Article"）和短篇报道（即"Letter"）两种形式发表世界科学研究的最新重大成果，能以Article形式在《Nature》这一国际顶尖学术期刊发表研究论文，是高校参与国际高端学术竞争、创建世界一流大学的一个标志性成果。

 

 

For Authors

Manuscript formatting guide

This guide describes how to prepare contributions for submission. We recommend you read this in full if you have not previously submitted a contribution to Nature. We also recommend that, before submission, you familiarize yourself with Nature’s style and content by reading the journal, either in print or online, particularly if you have not submitted to the journal recently.

 

1.1 Articles

Articles are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications. They do not normally exceed 5 pages of Nature and have no more than 50 references. (One page of undiluted text is about 1,300 words.)

 

Articles have a summary, separate from the main text, of up to 150 words, which does not have references, and does not contain numbers, abbreviations, acronyms or measurements unless essential. It is aimed at readers outside the discipline. This summary contains a paragraph (2-3 sentences) of basic-level introduction to the field; a brief account of the background and rationale of the work; a statement of the main conclusions (introduced by the phrase 'Here we show' or its equivalent); and finally, 2-3 sentences putting the main findings into general context so it is clear how the results described in the paper have moved the field forwards.

 

Articles are typically 3,000 words of text, beginning with up to 500 words of referenced text expanding on the background to the work (some overlap with the summary is acceptable), before proceeding to a concise, focused account of the findings, ending with one or two short paragraphs of discussion.

 

The text may contain a few short subheadings (not more than six in total) of no more than 40 characters each (less than one line of text in length).

 

Articles typically have 5 or 6 display items (figures or tables).

 

1.2 Letters

Letters are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.

 

They do not normally exceed 4 pages of Nature, and have no more than 30 references. They begin with a fully referenced paragraph, ideally of about 200 words, but certainly no more than 300 words, aimed at readers in other disciplines. This paragraph starts with a 2-3 sentence basic introduction to the field; followed by a one-sentence statement of the main conclusions starting 'Here we show' or equivalent phrase; and finally, 2-3 sentences putting the main findings into general context so it is clear how the results described in the paper have moved the field forwards.

 

Please refer to our annotated example to see how the summary paragraph for a Letter should be constructed.

 

The rest of the text is typically about 1,500 words long. Any discussion at the end of the text should be as succinct as possible, not repeating previous summary/introduction material, to briefly convey the general relevance of the work.

 

Letters typically have 3 or 4 small display items (figures or tables).

 

Word counts refer to the text of the paper. References, title, author list and acknowledgements do not have to be included in total word counts.

 

1.3 Brief Communications Arising and Corrections

Brief Communications Arising are exceptionally interesting or important comments and clarifications on original research papers or other peer-reviewed material published in Nature. They are published online but not in print.

 

For further details of and instructions for how to submit a correction to peer-reviewed material published in Nature, please access our Brief Communications Arising section.

 

1.4 Other contributions to Nature

Please access the other submitted material pages for further details on any of the contribution types below.

 

News and Comment

Correspondence

Obituaries

Opinion

Books & Arts

Futures

News & Views

Insights, Reviews and Perspectives

Analysis

Hypothesis

Careers

Technology Features

Outlooks

2. The editorial process

See getting published in Nature for an explanation of Nature's editorial criteria for publication, refereeing policy and how editors handle papers after submission. Submission to a Nature journal is taken by the journal to mean that all the listed authors have agreed all of the contents. See authorship policy for more details.

 

3. Presubmission enquiries

If you wish to enquire whether your Article or Letter might be suitable for consideration by Nature, please use our online presubmission enquiry service. All presubmission enquiries must include a cover paragraph to the editor stating the interest to a broad scientific readership, a fully referenced summary paragraph in the style for Letters to Nature, and a reference list.

 

4. Readability

Nature is an international journal covering all the sciences. Contributions should therefore be written clearly and simply so that they are accessible to readers in other disciplines and to readers for whom English is not their first language.

 

Essential but specialized terms should be explained concisely but not didactically.

 

For gene, protein and other specialized names authors can use their preferred terminology so long as it is in current use by the community, but they must give all known names for the entity at first use in the paper. Nature prefers authors to use internationally agreed nomenclature; details are provided in our author policies. Please also note the special circumstances about online publication of formal descriptions of new species.

 

Nature's editors provide detailed advice about format before contributions are formally accepted for publication. Nature's editors often suggest revised titles and rewrite the summaries of Articles and first paragraphs of Letters so the conclusions are clear to a broad readership.

 

After acceptance, Nature's subeditors (copyeditors) ensure that the text and figures are readable and clear to those outside the field, and edit papers into Nature's house style. They pay particular attention to summary paragraphs, overall clarity, figures, figure legends and titles.

 

Proofs are sent before publication; authors are welcome to discuss proposed changes with Nature's subeditors, but Nature reserves the right to make the final decision about matters of style and the size of figures.

 

A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found in SciDev.Net's "How do I?" section.

 

5. Format of Articles and Letters.

Contributions should be double-spaced and written in English (spellings as in the Oxford English Dictionary)

 

Contributions should be organized in the sequence: title, text, methods, references, Supplementary Information line (if any), acknowledgements, author contributions, author information (containing data deposition statement, competing interest declaration and corresponding author line), tables, figure legends.

 

5.1 Titles

Titles do not exceed two lines in print. This equates to 90 characters (including spaces) for Letters, or 75 characters (including spaces) for Articles. Titles do not normally include numbers, acronyms, abbreviations or punctuation. They should include sufficient detail for indexing purposes but be general enough for readers outside the field to appreciate what the paper is about.

 

5.2 Text

Articles should fill no more than 5 pages, and Letters no more than 4 pages, of Nature. An uninterrupted page of text contains about 1,300 words. A typical Article contains about 3,000 words of text and, additionally, five small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and methods section if applicable. A typical Letter to Nature contains about 1,500 words of text (excluding the first paragraph of Letters, figure legends, reference list and the methods section if applicable) and four small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends. A composite figure (with several panels) usually needs to take about half a page, equivalent to about 600 words, in order for all the elements to be visible (see section 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

 

When submitting new or revised manuscripts, authors should state in a cover letter to the editor their rough estimate of the length of their paper in terms of number of pages of Nature.Authors of contributions that significantly exceed the limits stated here or specified by the editor will have to shorten their papers before acceptance, inevitably delaying publication.

 

Nature requires authors to specify the contribution made by their co-authors in the end notes of the paper (see section 5.5). If authors regard it as essential to indicate that two or more co-authors are equal in status, they may be identified by an asterisk symbol with the caption ‘These authors contributed equally to this work’ immediately under the address list. If more than three co-authors are equal in status, this should be indicated in the author contributions statement. Present addresses appear immediately below the author list (below the footnote rule at the bottom of the first page) and may be identified by a dagger symbol; all other essential author-related explanation is in the acknowledgements.

 

Our preferred format for text is Microsoft Word, with the style tags removed. We are able to acceptTeX, but it must convert correctly to a PDF before it can be accepted (as we convertTeX to Word, and we require a PDF for reference during the conversion).

 

We prefer the use of a ‘standard’ font, preferably 12-point Times New Roman. For mathematical symbols, Greek letters and other special characters, use normal text or Symbol font. Word Equation Editor/MathType should be used only for formulae that cannot be produced using normal text or Symbol font.

 

If using Word 2007, please provide the manuscript in Compatibility Mode (i.e. as a Word 97-2003 document; saved as .doc, not .docx).

 

5.3 Methods.

If brief (less than 200 words in total), methods can be included in the main text at an appropriate place. Otherwise, they should be described at the end of the text in a ‘Methods Summary’ section of no more than 300 words.

 

Detailed descriptions of methods already published should be avoided; a reference number can be provided to save space, with any new addition or variation briefly stated.

 

If more space is required to describe the methods completely, the author should include the 300-word section ‘Methods Summary’ and provide an additional ‘Methods’ section at the end of the text, following the figure legends. This Methods section will appear in the online PDF and in the full-text (HTML) version of the paper online, but will not appear in the printed issue. The Methods section should not normally exceed 1,000 words of text, and should be subdivided by short bold headings referring to methods used. If further references are included in this section, the numbering should continue from the end of the last reference number in the rest of the paper and the list should accompany the additional Methods at the end of the paper.

 

If both a Methods Summary and additional Methods section are required, the Methods Summary will appear in print only but will not appear in the HTML version of the paper. Therefore, any critical information in the Methods Summary should also be incorporated into the Methods section. Because the Methods Summary does not appear online, any references included in this section must also be included in the Methods section in the same order; if required, additional references can then be included after these in the Methods section as described above. Note that the Methods Summary will only appear in the HTML version of the paper if there is no additional Methods section.

 

There should be no duplication between the Methods section and the Supplementary Information. The Methods section cannot contain figures or tables (essential display items should be included in the Supplementary Information).

 

5.4 References

References are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, methods summary, tables, boxes, figure legends, online-only methods.

 

When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number.

 

Do not use linked fields (produced by EndNote and similar programs). Please use the one-click button provided by EndNote to remove EndNote codes before saving your file.

 

The maximum number of references, strictly enforced, is 50 for Articles and 30 for Letters. Only one publication can be listed for each number.

 

Only articles that have been published or submitted to a named publication should be in the reference list; papers in preparation should be mentioned in the text with a list of authors (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution).

 

Published conference abstracts, numbered patents and preprints on recognized servers may be included in reference lists, but text, grant details and acknowledgements may not. (An exception is the highlighted references which we ask authors of Reviews, Perspectives and Insights articles to provide.)

 

All authors should be included in reference lists unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by ‘et al.’.

 

Please follow the style below in the published edition of Nature in preparing reference lists.

 

Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names.

Titles of all cited articles are required. Titles of articles cited in reference lists should be in upright, not italic text; the first word of the title is capitalized, the title written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles are italic with all main words capitalized. Journal titles are italic and abbreviated according to common usage. Volume numbers are bold. The publisher and city of publication are required for books cited. (Refer to published papers in Nature for details.)

References to web-only journals should give authors, article title and journal name as above, followed by URL in full - or DOI if known - and the year of publication in parentheses.

References to websites should give authors if known, title of cited page, URL in full, and year of posting in parentheses.

5.5 End notes

End notes are brief and follow the reference list. Please refer to our annotated example to see how they appear in a Nature paper.