Aims and scope of journal
Sample issue
Editorial process
Editors and contact information
Relationship to other nature journals
Editorial and publishing policies
Impact factor
Editorial blogs
Abbreviation
ISSN and EISSN
The guide for authors and the editorial policies, including the guide for referees, are available in PDF format.
AIMS AND SCOPE OF JOURNAL
Nature Medicine is a biomedical research journal devoted to publishing the latest and most exciting advances in biomedical research for scientists and physicians, with an emphasis on clarity of presentation. Articles cover fields such as cancer biology, cardiovascular research, gene therapy, immunology, vaccine development, and neuroscience, aiming to keep Ph.D. and M.D. readers informed of a wide range of biomedical research findings. Original research articles published in Nature Medicine range from basic findings that have clear implications for disease pathogenesis and therapy to the earliest phases of human investigation, and are submitted from research groups at universities, independent research institutions, and biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries world-wide. As a cross-disciplinary journal at the heart of the international biomedical research community, Nature Medicine publishes the most relevant original research articles, news, and commentary that form the foundations of tomorrow's medicine.
SAMPLE ISSUE
Free online access to the January 2004 issue of Nature Medicine.
EDITORIAL PROCESS
The overview of the journal's manuscript decision process includes submission, editorial decision on whether the paper should be reviewed, peer review, decisions after review, revision, acceptance in principle, final submission and acceptance, proofs, advance online publication, and print publication. Before submitting a paper, authors should consult our editorial policies, as well as technical tips for using our online submission system.
Please also consult our general guide for manuscript preparation and submission, which includes information on article formats, journal style, and figure preparation tips. Note that procedures for initial submission, revision, and final submission are slightly different, so please consult the directions before proceeding to the online submission system. Presubmission inquiries are not a prerequisite for the regular submission process, but are intended as a mechanism for authors to receive rapid feedback on whether a manuscript in preparation is likely to be of interest to the journal. We encourage authors who have already prepared their manuscripts to bypass the presubmission inquiry process and upload their papers as a regular submission to the journal.
Journals in the Nature family no longer take copyright on the primary research articles we publish. Instead we ask authors to sign a license for us to publish their work. US government employees sign a different license.
EDITORS AND CONTACT INFORMATION
Like the other Nature titles, Nature Medicine has no external editorial board. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional editors. For information on their research backgrounds and scientific interests, see About the Editors.
A full list of journal staff appears on the masthead.
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER NATURE JOURNALS
Nature Medicine is editorially independent, and its editors make their own decisions, independent of the
other Nature journals.
If a paper is rejected from one Nature journal, the authors
can use an automated manuscript transfer service to submit the paper to another Nature journal via a link
sent to them by the editor handling the manuscript. Authors should note that referees' comments
(including any confidential comments to the editor) and identities are transferred to the editor of the second journal along with the manuscript.
In that case, the journal editors will take the previous reviews into account when making their decision,
although in some cases the editors may choose to take advice from additional or alternative referees.
Alternatively, authors may choose to request a fresh review, in which case
they should not use the automated transfer link, and
the editors will evaluate the paper without reference to the previous review process.
More details are available on the manuscript transfer service and on the relationships between Nature titles.
EDITORIAL AND PUBLISHING POLICIES
Please see authors and referees @ npg for detailed information about author and referee services and publication policies at the Nature family of journals. These journals, including Nature Medicine, share a number of common policies including the following:
Author responsibilities
License agreement and author copyright
Embargo policy and press releases
Use of experimental animals and human subjects
Competing financial interests
Availability of materials and data
Digital image integrity and standards
Security concerns
Refutations, complaints and corrections
Duplicate publication
Confidentiality and pre-publicity
Plagiarism and fabrication
IMPACT FACTOR
The 2007 impact factor for Nature Medicine is 26.382, according to the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports. This places Nature Medicine as the top primary research journal in Medicine (Research and Experimental).
The 2007 impact factor represents the number of citations in 2007 to papers published in 2005 and 2006, divided by the total number of papers published in 2005 and 2006. A more detailed explanation of impact factors appears on the ISI web site.
EDITORIAL BLOGS
We encourage community participation in all Nature journal blogs. Spoonful of Medicine is a blog where we hope to enlighten, entertain and occasionally exasperate you with our comments on biomedical research and public health. Nautilus is a blog for authors and aspiring authors of Nature Publishing Group journals. Peer-to-Peer is a blog for reviewers and is about peer review. Other Nature Publishing Group blogs can be found on the blog index page.
ABBREVIATION
The correct abbreviation for abstracting and indexing purposes is Nat. Med.
ISSN AND EISSN
The international standard serial number (ISSN) for Nature Medicine is 1078-8956, and the electronic international standard serial number (EISSN) is 1546-170X.
The guide for authors and the editorial policies, including the guide for referees, are available in PDF format.
