Policies and Processes

This section provides information you will need when reviewing a manuscript for Nature. Please read this section before submitting a report.

The general peer-review policy for all Nature Research journals is available in the Peer-review policy section of our Editorial policies.

Criteria for publication

Nature receives many more submissions than it can publish each month. Therefore, we ask referees to keep in mind that to be published in Nature, a paper should meet several general criteria:

• The data are technically sound
• The paper provides strong evidence for its conclusions
• The results are novel (we do not consider abstracts and internet preprints to compromise novelty)
• The manuscript is important to researchers in its specific field
• The paper will be interesting to a general audience of scientists

In general, to be acceptable, a paper should represent an advance in understanding likely to influence thinking in the field. There should be some reason why the work deserves the visibility of publication in Nature rather than a more specialist journal.

The review process

All submitted manuscripts are read by the editorial staff. To save authors and referees time, only those papers that seem most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review.

Manuscripts judged to be of potential interest to our readership are sent for formal review, typically to three reviewers. The editors then make a decision, based on the reviewers’ advice, from among several possibilities:

• Accept, with or without editorial revisions
• Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached
• Reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission
• Reject outright, typically on grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational problems

Referees are welcome to recommend a particular course of action, but they should bear in mind that other referees may have different views, and the editors may have to make a decision based on conflicting advice. The most useful reports, therefore, provide the editors with the information on which a decision should be based. Setting out the arguments for and against publication is often as helpful as a direct recommendation one way or the other.

Editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, and we do not always follow the majority recommendation. We try to evaluate the strength of the arguments raised by each referee and by the authors, and we may also consider other information not available to either party. Our primary responsibilities are to our readers and to the scientific community at large, and in deciding how best to serve them, we must weigh the claims of each paper against the many others also under consideration.

We may go back to referees for further advice, particularly in cases where referees disagree with each other, or where the authors believe they have been misunderstood on points of fact. We therefore ask that referees be willing to provide follow-up advice as requested. We are very aware, however, that referees are normally reluctant to be drawn into prolonged disputes, so we try to keep consultation to the minimum we judge necessary to provide a fair hearing for the authors.

When referees agree to review a paper, we consider this a commitment to review subsequent revisions as well. However, editors will not send resubmitted papers to the referees if it seems that the authors have not made a serious attempt to address the referees’ criticisms.

We take referees’ criticisms very seriously, and in particular, we are very reluctant to disregard technical criticisms. In cases where one referee alone opposes publication, we may consult with the other referees as to whether s/he is applying an unduly critical standard. We occasionally bring in additional referees to resolve disputes, but we prefer to avoid doing so unless there is a specific issue on which we feel a need for further advice.

Transparent peer review

Nature uses a transparent peer review system, where for manuscripts submitted from February 2020 we can publish the reviewer comments to the authors and author rebuttal letters of published original research articles. Authors are provided the opportunity to opt out of this scheme at the completion of the peer review process, before the paper is accepted. If the manuscript was transferred to us from another Nature Research journal, we will not publish reviewer reports or author rebuttals of versions of the manuscript considered by the originating Nature Research journal. The peer review file is published online as a supplementary peer review file. Although we hope that the peer review files will provide a detailed and useful view into our peer review process, it is important to note that these files will not contain all the information considered in the editorial decision making process, such as the discussions between editors, editorial decision letters, or any confidential comments made by reviewers or authors to the editors.

This scheme only applies to original research Articles, and not to Review articles or to other published content. For more information, please refer to our FAQ page.

Reviewer information

In recognition of the time and expertise our reviewers provide to Nature’s editorial process, we formally acknowledge their contribution to the external peer review of articles published in the journal. All peer-reviewed content will carry an anonymous statement of peer reviewer acknowledgement, and for those reviewers who give their consent, we will publish their names alongside the published article. We will continue to publish peer reviewer reports where authors opt in to our separate transparent peer review scheme. In cases where authors opt in to publication of peer reviewer comments and reviewers opt in to being named, we will not link a reviewer’s name to their report unless they choose to sign their comments to the author with their name. For more information, please refer to our FAQ page.

If the reviewers wish to be named their names will appear in alphabetical order at the end of the paper in a statement as below:

• Nature thanks [Name], [Name] and [Name] for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Any reviewers that wish to remain anonymous will be acknowledged using a slightly modified statement:

• Nature thanks [Name], [Name] and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

If no reviewers agree to be named, we will still acknowledge their valuable service using the statement below:

• Nature thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Selecting referees

Referee selection is critical to the review process, and we base our choice on many factors, including expertise, reputation, specific recommendations and our own previous experience of a referee’s characteristics. For instance, we avoid using referees who are chronically slow, careless, too harsh or too lenient.

We normally contact potential referees before sending them manuscripts to review. Referees should bear in mind that these messages contain confidential information, which should be treated as such.

Confidentiality

We ask referees to treat the review process as strictly confidential, and not to discuss the manuscript with anyone not directly involved in the review. It is acceptable to consult with laboratory colleagues, but please identify them to the editors. Consulting with experts from outside the referee’s own laboratory may be acceptable, but please check with the editors before doing so, to avoid involving anyone who may have been excluded by the authors. Please do not upload manuscripts into generative AI tools.

Timing

Nature is committed to rapid editorial decisions and publication, and we believe that an efficient editorial process is a valuable service both to our authors and to the scientific community as a whole. We therefore ask referees to respond promptly (normally within two weeks of receiving a manuscript, although this may be either longer or shorter by prior arrangement). If referees anticipate a longer delay, we ask them to let us know so that we can keep the authors informed and, where necessary, find alternative referees.

Anonymity

We do not release referees’ identities to authors or to other referees, except when referees specifically ask to be identified. Before revealing their identities, referees should consider the possibility that they may be asked to comment on the criticisms of other referees; identified referees may find it more difficult to be objective in such circumstances. We ask referees not to identify themselves to authors without the editor’s knowledge. If referees wish to reveal their identities, this should be done through the editor. We deplore any attempt by authors to confront referees or determine their identities. Our own policy is to neither confirm nor deny any speculation about referees’ identities, and we encourage referees to consider adopting a similar policy.

Editing referees’ reports

As a matter of policy, we do not suppress referees’ reports; any comments that were intended for the authors are transmitted, regardless of what we may think of the content. On rare occasions, we may edit a report to remove offensive language or comments that reveal confidential information about other matters. We ask referees to avoid saying anything that may cause needless offence; conversely, authors should recognize that criticisms are not necessarily unfair simply because they are expressed in robust language.

Competing interests

Our normal policy is to avoid referees whom the authors have excluded, for whatever reason. We also usually try to avoid referees who have recent or ongoing collaborations with the authors, who have commented on drafts of the manuscript, who are in direct competition to publish the same finding, who we know to have a history of dispute with the authors, or who have a financial interest in the outcome. It is not possible for the editors to know of all possible biases, however, so we ask referees to draw our attention to anything that might affect their review, and to decline to review in cases where they feel unable to be objective.

We recognize, however, that competing interests are not always clear-cut, and the above circumstances need not automatically undermine the validity of a report. Indeed, the people best qualified to evaluate a paper are often those closest to the field, and a sceptical attitude toward a particular claim does not mean that a referee cannot be persuaded by new evidence. We try to take these factors into account when weighing referees’ reports.

Referees who have reviewed a paper for another journal might feel that it is unfair to the authors for them to re-review it for Nature. We disagree; the fact that two journals have independently identified a particular person as well qualified to review a paper does not, in our view, decrease the validity of his or her opinion.