--- name: nature description: Use when targeting Nature or deciding whether a manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, framing, method-and-evidence bar, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics. --- # Nature (nature) ## Journal positioning Nature is the world's most broadly read scientific weekly, published by Springer Nature. It publishes a tiny selection of primary research that represents a single, decisive conceptual or empirical advance of exceptional significance to scientists across disciplines — not just to specialists in the author's field. The readership spans biology, physics, chemistry, earth science, and beyond; every paper must therefore tell a compelling story to a scientifically literate non-specialist. Almost all manuscripts are desk-rejected by editors before reaching peer review because they do not clear the broad-significance bar. This skill is a **fit / venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on the Springer Nature site and the submission system. ## When to trigger - The author names Nature as the target venue. - A manuscript represents a single, paradigm-shifting result and the author is deciding between Nature, Science, and Cell. - A specialist paper needs radical re-framing into a one-sentence "why the world needs to know this now" advance. - The author needs Nature's high-frequency desk-reject risks and credible alternative-venue routing before submitting. ## Scope & topic fit - Any field of natural science or clinical science, provided the result is exceptional by cross-disciplinary standards — not just top-of-field. - Fundamental discoveries that open new research directions (new mechanism, new phenomenon, new paradigm), rather than the best current increment in an ongoing program. - Technology breakthroughs (AI systems, materials, therapeutics) where performance or principle crosses a conceptual threshold visible to scientists outside the field. - Results that directly reshape scientific understanding of a major open question (origin of structures, disease mechanism, planetary science, evolution). - Cross-disciplinary findings that bridge two or more fields and are best received by a joint audience. ## Method & evidence bar - The central claim must be robustly supported and self-contained: controls, statistics, replication across conditions, and data quality must be unimpeachable, because Nature's post-publication scrutiny is intense. - Reporting standards are strict: a Nature reporting summary (life sciences) covering statistics, randomization, blinding, sample sizes, and replication must accompany biological papers; equivalent rigor is expected in physical-science methods sections. - Extended Data (up to 10 figures/tables) carries essential validation, freeing the main figures for the narrative advance. - Data and code availability statements are mandatory; deposition in community-standard repositories is expected. - For studies involving human participants: ethics approval, consent, pre-registration, and reporting-guideline compliance are required. ## Structure & house style - Articles are short (main text is tightly constrained — re-check current word limits); the paper must make its conceptual contribution clear in the opening two paragraphs without assuming deep specialist knowledge. - The title and abstract must convey the advance to a broad scientist: frame the finding ("We show that X causes Y") not the method ("We used CRISPR to ..."). - Letters (legacy format) and Articles both carry a brief Methods section in the main text; detailed protocols go into Supplementary Information or Extended Data, not the body. - A significance statement or editor-facing cover letter must articulate in plain language why this result matters beyond the immediate field — editors use this as the first triage filter. - Figures are publication-quality and must stand alone with legends; Nature is a print+online journal with tight figure-count limits (re-check current limits). - Supplementary Information is for secondary validation; moving core results to the SI to meet length limits is a common desk-reject trigger. ## Official-submission checklist - Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked. - Search the live site for "Nature author instructions" and follow the current Springer Nature version. - Re-check current article-type options (Article, Letter if still active, Brief Communication), word/figure limits, abstract format, and Extended Data allowance. - Re-check reporting summary requirements (life-sciences checklist; physical/earth-sciences equivalents), data/code deposition policy, and materials-availability statement. - Re-check preprint policy, embargo policy, AI-use disclosure, competing-interests and funding disclosure. - Re-check ethics/consent/registration requirements for human or vertebrate-animal studies. - If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win. ## Pre-submission self-check - [ ] One sentence explaining why this result matters to scientists outside the immediate subfield — a biologist would ask "so what?" about a physics paper, and vice versa; that answer must be in paragraph one. - [ ] The contribution is framed as a conceptual advance or new phenomenon, not as "the first study to use method X on system Y." - [ ] The manuscript does not depend on prior field-specific jargon in the title, abstract, or opening paragraph. - [ ] Extended Data carries all essential validation; the main figures tell the complete narrative with no gaps. - [ ] Reporting summary, data/code availability, and ethics/consent documentation are complete before submission. - [ ] The cover letter explicitly names the cross-disciplinary readership that will benefit. ## Common desk-reject triggers - Significance is specialist-level only: "important advance in field X" without a compelling reason for a broader scientist to care. - The paper is the fifth study of its kind rather than a decisive, paradigm-opening result. - Core results buried in Supplementary Information; the main figures alone do not tell the story. - Methods section is inadequate for reproducibility; no reporting summary or incomplete statistics reporting. - Framing is technical ("we develop a method for ...") rather than discovery-based ("we discover that ..."). - A result that belongs in a Nature portfolio journal (nature-genetics, nature-methods, nature-materials, nature-medicine) — appropriate specialization is not a weakness. ## Re-routing decision - Strong result, specialist framing or specialist audience → the appropriate Nature portfolio journal: `nature-genetics`, `nature-methods`, `nature-cell-biology`, `nature-materials`, `nature-medicine`, `nature-physics`, `nature-chemistry`, `nature-neuroscience`. - Broad significance, AAAS context or US institutional framing → `science`. - Solid, complete advance of broad-discipline interest, not exceptional → `nature-communications`, `science-advances`, or `pnas`. - Cell-biology or molecular-mechanism advance with deep validation → `cell`. ## Output format ```text [Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason) [Target] Nature [Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics> [Method/evidence] [Top risk] [Official items to re-check]
[Re-route suggestion] ```