Seamless collaboration across all in-house teams and our authors from submission to acceptance, with amplification of exposure post-publication. We serve the community with everything they need.
Nature Portfolio Editors use their expertise to assess the scholarly merit of an author's manuscript.If a paper is not suitable for the journal to which it was submitted, transfers between appropriate alternative journals expedite the submission process and save time and effort for the authors.
We strongly believe in the value added by our transfers system. Of the nearly 50,000 authors that were surveyed in 2020, about half accepted the transfer suggestion of our Editors. The large majority of those overwhelmingly liked the service—with 97% rating it as ‘excellent’ or ‘good’, and 76% saying they would accept a transfer offer in the future. In addition, editorially-guided transfers generally have an acceptance rate twice that of direct submissions
Collaboration is key in our goal to support authors on their publication journey. Internally, Editors partner with art and copy Editors and other support teams to bring articles to life. Externally, editorial teams strengthen and expand the ties to the community by sourcing peer reviewers for each paper.
Through this collaborative approach, Editors assess, select, improve upon and publish the best papers in their fields. This rigorous and labour-intensive publication process represents a significant resource investment in our journals.
Our policies help authors achieve a high level of openness for their research, from opening data, code & protocols behind their paper, to publishing it via Open Access and, in some cases, providing OA funding. Learn more about our recent Landmark agreements below. Max Planck Digital Library agreement: If you are an author based in Germany, you may be able to publish OA in Nature and the Nature research journals with your fees covered. BIBSAM agreement: If you are a corresponding author affiliated with a participating Swedish institution, you may be eligible to publish OA in Nature and the Nature Research journals with your fees covered.
Visit our open access funding page to check whether your institution or research partner makes OA funding available.
A prime example of one of our progressive initiatives is Protocol Exchange; an open repository for the deposition and sharing of scientific research protocols. We encourage authors to submit associated protocols to provide detailed reporting on their analytical and experimental designs, as well as statistical analyses.
In addition, Springer Nature and protocols.io have partnered for a pilot project to explore the digital lab space. Protocols.io leverages mobile and web technology to accelerate and increase the reproducibility of scientific research.
Our data sharing policies are also designed to benefit the scientific community and promote transparency and reproducibility.
In 2013, we introduced a mandatory reporting checklist requiring details of analytical and experimental design as well as statistical analyses.
83% of surveyed authors felt our checklist had significantly improved reporting of statistics within papers published in Nature.
A condition of publication in a Nature Portfolio journal is that authors are required to make data and code promptly available to readers without undue qualifications.
Our active encouragement of data deposition has boosted data availability associated with published papers from around 50% to over 80% in some disciplines.
