The policy outlined on this page applies to Nature journals (those with the word "Nature" in their title). NPG publishes many other journals, each of which has separate publication policies described on its website. A current list of these journals, with links to each journal's homepage is available. 

An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. Therefore, a condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to readers without preconditions. Any restrictions on the availability of materials or information must be disclosed to the editors at the time of submission. Any restrictions must also be disclosed in the submitted manuscript, including details of how readers can obtain materials and information. If materials are to be distributed by a for-profit company, this should be stated in the paper.

Supporting data must be made available to editors and peer-reviewers at the time of submission for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript. Peer-reviewers may be asked to comment on the terms of access to materials, methods and/or data sets; Nature journals reserve the right to refuse publication in cases where authors do not provide adequate assurances that they can comply with the journal's requirements for sharing materials.

After publication, readers who encounter refusal by the authors to comply with these policies should contact the chief editor of the journal (or the chief biology/chief physical sciences editors in the case of Nature). In cases where editors are unable to resolve a complaint, the journal may refer the matter to the authors' funding institution and/or publish a formal statement of correction, attached online to the publication, stating that readers have been unable to obtain necessary materials to replicate the findings.

Details about how to share some specific materials, data and methods can be found in the sections below. The preferred way to share large data sets is via public repositories. Some of these repositories offer authors the option to host data associated with a manuscript confidentially, and provide anonymous access to peer-reviewers before public release. These repositories coordinate public release of the data with the journal's publication date (advance online publication (AOP) or, if the manuscript is not published AOP, print/online publication). This option should be used when possible, but it is the authors' responsibility to communicate with the repository to ensure that public release is made promptly on the journal's AOP (or print/online) publication date. Any supporting data sets for which there is no public repository must be made available as Supplementary Information files that will be freely accessible on nature.com upon publication. In cases where it is technically impossible for such files to be provided to the journal, the authors must make the data available to editors and peer-reviewers at submission, and directly upon request to any reader on and after the publication date, the author providing a URL or other unique identifier in the manuscript. 

Nature journal editorials providing more detail for these policies:

Nature Cell Biology: Policy update (sharing materials) March 2005.

Nature Chemical Biology: Molecular cross-fertilization  February 2006.

Nature Cell Biology: Sharing science May 2006.

Nature: Illuminating the black box 16 July 2006.

Nature Cell Biology: Nothing to hide (data not shown) June 2006.

Nature Genetics: Access to materials October 2004.

Nature: Methods in full (15 February 2007, comments on this methods format are welcome at Nautilus, the author blog).

Nature Methods: Social software (March 2007, comments on this Nature Methods policy are welcome at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog).

Nature Chemical Biology: A new look for chemical information (June 2007, comments are welcome at Nautilus, the author blog).

Nature Neuroscience: Got data? (August 2007, comments welcome at this Nautilus post).

Nature Genetics: Compete, collaborate, compel (August 2007, comments welcome at this Nautilus post).

Nature Methods: Methods section remake (May 2009, comments welcome at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog).

Nature Cell Biology: Reproducible methods and How robust are your data? (new rules for presentation of statistics). Both June 2009.

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A condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to others without preconditions.

For materials such as mutant strains and cell lines, the Nature journals require authors to use established public repositories when one exists (for example, Jackson Laboratory, the European Mouse Mutant Archive (EMMA), RIKEN Bioresource Centre, the Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Centers, American Type Culture Collection (Americas), American Type Culture Collection (Asia/Europe), UK Stem Cell Bank), and provide accession numbers in the manuscript.

Flow cytometry
Every manuscript that contains flow cytometry experiments should identify in the Methods section all antibody reagents by clone identifier, vendor and fluorochrome. Authors should identify the instrument and software used to collect and analyse experimental data. Axes labels for plots or graphs depicting flow cytometry data should state the marker (for example, CD4) and the axes scales (log or linear) should be clearly visible. Authors should provide numerical analysis for the number of cells analysed and the absolute numbers or percentages (with statistics stated in either the text, legend or in a supplementary table) of the relevant cell population(s) within post-sort fractions. Hints for good general practice in the description of flow cytometry experiments can be found in this Nature Immunology article and at the MIFlowCyt Standards section of SourceForge.

For papers describing a new cell population or for which a given sorted cell population is critical to the main message imparted by the new work, authors should describe in a supplementary figure or two the full gating strategy used for the experiments described in the manuscript. A figure depicting the 'gates' used to identify sorted subsets is useful and should be provided to the referees on request. These data would include preliminary forward and side scatter gates of the starting cell population, indicating where boundaries between 'positive' and 'negative' staining cell populations are defined. For preliminary sorts that use 'cocktails' of antibodies to exclude certain cell populations, for example, lineage-minus (Lin-), the antibodies and fluorochromes that are contained in the 'cocktail' need to be specified for the 'dump' channel.

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A condition of publication in a Nature journal is that authors are required to make materials, data and associated protocols promptly available to others without preconditions.

Data sets must be made freely available to readers from the date of publication, and must be provided to editors and peer-reviewers at submission, for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript.

For the following types of data set, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. Accession numbers must be provided in the paper. Examples of appropriate public repositories are listed below.

DNA and protein sequences

Protein sequences: Uniprot

DNA and RNA sequences: Genbank/EMBL/DDBJ, Protein DataBank, UniProt.

DNA sequencing data (traces for capillary electrophoresis and short reads for next-generation sequencing): NCBI trace and short-read archive, EBI Ensembl trace sever

This policy includes even short stretches of novel sequence information such as epitopes, functional domains, genetic markers, or haplotypes. Short novel sequences must include surrounding sequence information to provide context.

The sequences of all RNAi, antisense and morpholino probes must be included in the paper or deposited in a public database, with the accession number quoted. When an unpublished library is included in the paper, at minimum the sequences of the probes central to the conclusions of the paper must be presented.

Macromolecular structures

Authors of papers describing structures of biological macromolecules must provide atomic coordinates and related experimental data (structure factor amplitudes/intensities for crystal structures, or restraints for NMR structures) upon request of editors for the purposes of evaluating the manuscript, if they are not already freely accessible in a publicly available and recognized database (for example, Protein DataBank, Uniprot, Nucleic Acids Database or Biological Magnetic Resonance Databank).

Where there is no public repository and if the data sets are too large to submit to the journal online, authors should either consult the journal editorial office for advice or provide five separate copies of these data to the editors in an appropriate format (for example, CD or DVD) for the purposes of peer-review.

Accessibility must be designated "for immediate release on publication". For papers published in Nature, a weekly publication with a twice-weekly AOP publication schedule, the author must authorize Protein DataBank (PDB) release on the Wednesday of (or before) online or print publication. (The journal office informs authors of the publication date as soon as articles are scheduled, and also informs the PDB directly.) For papers published in the monthly Nature journals, the "for immediate release on publication" designation is adequate.

Microarray data

MIAME-compliant microarray data: deposit in GEO or ArrayExpress upon submission to the journal. 

Data must be MIAME-compliant, as described at the MGED web site specifying microarray standards.

Crystallographic data for small molecules

Manuscripts reporting new three-dimensional structures of small molecules from crystallographic analysis should include a .cif file and a structural figure with probability ellipsoids for publication as Supplementary Information. These files must have been checked using the IUCR's CheckCIF routine, and a PDF copy of the output must be included at submission, together with a justification for any alerts reported. Crystallographic data for small molecules should be submitted to the Cambridge Structural Database and the deposition number referenced appropriately in the manuscript. Full access must be provided on publication.

Other datasets

In addition to the above-mentioned mandatory requirements for data submission to community-endorsed public databases, Nature journals strongly recommend deposition of other types of data sets into appropriate public repositories that are at an earlier stage of development.  Examples of such repositories that facilitate sharing large data sets, some of which can offer the option of anonymous referee access to data before publication, include:

For proteomics data: PRIDE

For protein interaction data: IMEx consortium of databases including DIP, IntAct and MINT

For chemical compound screening and assay data: PubChem

Other databases recommended by Nature journals include IntAct, PeptideAtlas, Tranche, and the Global Proteome Machine Organization.

Earth sciences databases recommended by Nature journals include Pangaea, the publishing network for geoscientific and environmental data; PetDB, for geochemical data of rocks on the ocean floor; and GEOROC, geochemistry of rocks from the oceans and contintents.

See also: World Data Center system; National Climatic Data Center.

Astronomy and Astrophysics: NucAstroData; Plasma gate; Smithsonian/NASA astrophysics data system; SIMBAD astronomical database; UK solar system data centre.

Physics: NIST physical reference data; Hepdata reaction data.

Biology: NBII; ITIS (taxonomy); NCBI taxonomy; Species 2000; National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.

Nature journal editorials providing more detail for these policies: 

Nature: New policy for structural data (9 July 1998)

Nature: Rules of genome access (23 March 1990)

Nature: Microarray standards at last (26 September 2002)

Nature Cell Biology: Microarray data standards (November 2002, the third editorial on this web page)

Nature Immunology: Microarray policy (February 2003)

Nature Genetics: How to discuss ancestry and ethnicity (June 2004)

Nature Genetics: Criteria for association (November 2005)

Nature Medicine: Structural Integrity (February 2005)

Nature: Crystal Clear (30 June 2005)

Nature Cell Biology: Whither RNAi? (June 2003)

Nature Biotechnology: Democratizing proteomics data (Feedback and comments on this March 2007 Nature Biotechnology policy are welcome at Nautilus, the author blog.) Also Time for leadership, providing an update (August 2007) to the proposals in the previous editorial (comments from authors and other scientists in the field are welcome at this Nautilus post).

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology: Name that gene! (August 2007, Comments welcome on Nautilus.)

Nature: Shared genomes, describing the Nature journals' Creative Commons licence for genome sequences (6 December 2007.) Comments welcome on Nautilus.

Nature Methods: Thou shalt share your data (March 2008). Please visit Methagora, the Nature Methods blog, to comment on this Editorial and its recommendations.

Nature: The sharing principle (11 June 2009). Genetically modified mouse strains must be made available.

Nature Biotechnology: Credit where credit is overdue (July 2009). Proposes a universal tagging system that connects databases with authors.

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The entire guide for Editorial Policies is available in PDF format.