Nature Guide to Authors

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2005年9月         

This guide describes how to prepare contributions for submission. A short version of this guide to authors appears regularly (but not weekly) in the printed edition of Nature: see the contents pages of any issue of Nature for a reference to its most recent appearance in this format.

A short version of Nature's Guide to Authors is available as a one-page PDF (30 KB). We recommend you read the full version below if you have not previously submitted a contribution to Nature. If you are already familiar with Nature's Article and Letter formats, the short PDF version is sufficient to remind you of the essential details and may be more convenient to print out compared with the long version below. (If you require more detail, we recommend you consider cutting, pasting and printing the section(s) of interest below, rather than printing out the whole document.)

We strongly recommend that, before submission, you familiarize yourself with Nature's style and content by reading the journal, either in print or online, particularly if you have not submitted to the journal recently.

1. Formats for description of research

Nature's main formats for original research are Articles and Letters. The journal also publishes a very few Brief Communications.

1.1 Articles

are original reports whose conclusions represent a substantial advance in understanding of an important problem and have immediate, far-reaching implications.

Articles have a summary, separate from the main text, of up to 150 words, which does not have references, and does not contain numbers, abbreviations, acronyms or measurements unless essential. It is aimed at readers outside the discipline. This summary contains a brief account of the background and rationale of the work, followed by a statement of the main conclusions introduced by the phrase 'Here we show' or its equivalent.

Articles are typically more than 3,000 words of text, beginning with up to 500 words of referenced text expanding on the background to the work (some overlap with the summary is acceptable), before proceeding to a concise, focused account of the findings, ending with one or two short paragraphs of discussion.

The text may contain a few short subheadings (not more than six in total) of no more than 40 characters each (less than one line of text in length).

Articles typically have 5 or 6 small figures.

1.2 Letters

are short reports of original research focused on an outstanding finding whose importance means that it will be of interest to scientists in other fields.

They begin with a fully referenced paragraph of not more than 180 words, aimed at readers in other disciplines. This paragraph contains a summary of the background and rationale for the work, followed by a one-sentence statement of the main conclusions starting 'Here we show' or equivalent phrase.

The rest of the text is typically about 3,000 words long, starting with a further brief paragraph of introductory material if the author requires it, not repeating information in the summary paragraph. Any discussion at the end of the text should be as succinct as possible.

Letters typically have 3 or 4 small figures.

Word counts refer to the text of the paper. References, title, author list and acknowledgements do not have to be included in total word counts.

2. How to prepare your paper

See the followings for an explanation of Nature's editorial criteria for publication, refereeing policy and how editors handle papers after submission.

3. Presubmission enquiries

If you wish to enquire whether your Article or Letter might be suitable for consideration by Nature, please use our online presubmission enquiry service . All presubmission enquiries must include a a cover paragraph to the editor stating the interest to a broad scientific readership, a fully referenced summary paragraph in the style for Letters to Nature, and a reference list. Note that presubmission enquiries are NOT considered for Brief Communications.

4. Readability

Nature is an international journal covering all the sciences. Contributions should therefore be written clearly and simply so that they are accessible to readers in other disciplines and to readers for whom English is not their first language.

Essential but specialized terms should be explained concisely but not didactically.

For gene, protein and other specialized names authors can use their preferred terminology so long as it is in current use by the community, but they must give all known names for the entity at first use in the paper. Authors in doubt about terminology are advised to use internationally agreed nomenclature for genes and for mouse strains.

It is often useful to ask colleagues specializing in other disciplines to comment on the clarity of a final draft before submission to Nature.

Nature's editors provide detailed advice about format before contributions are formally accepted for publication. Nature's editors often suggest revised titles and rewrite the summaries of Articles and first paragraphs of Letters so the conclusions are clear to a broad readership.

A useful set of articles providing general advice about writing and submitting scientific papers can be found in SciDev.Net's"How do I?" section. There are many articles and books written on this topic.

5. Format of Articles and Letters.

Contributions should be double-spaced and written in English (spellings as in the Oxford English Dictionary)

Contributions should be organized in the sequence: title, text, methods, references, Supplementary Information line (if any), acknowledgements, interest declaration, corresponding author line, tables, figure legends. When providing word counts for the editors, authors need only state the number of words in the text (and, separately, methods and total figure legends). Title, acknowledgements and other matter does not need to be included in the word count.

5.1 Titles

do not exceed 90 characters (including spaces), and do not normally include numbers, acronyms, abbreviations or punctuation. They should include sufficient detail for indexing purposes but be general enough for readers outside the field to appreciate what the paper is about.

5.2 Text

Articles should fill no more than 5 pages, and Letters no more than 3 pages, of Nature. An uninterrupted page of text contains about 1,300 words. A typical Article contains more than 3,000 words of text and, additionally, five small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends, reference list and methods section if applicable. A typical Letter to Nature contains about 3,000 words of text (excluding the first paragraph of Letters, figure legends, reference list and the methods section if applicable) and four small display items (figures and/or tables) with brief legends (see 5.9 for instructions on sizing figures).

Longer papers are allowed.

If authors regard it as essential to indicate that two or more co-authors are equal in status, they may be identified by a symbol with the caption 'these authors contributed equally to the work' immediately under the address list.

Present addresses appear immediately below the author list; all other essential author-related explanation is in the acknowledgements.

Authors should format Articles or Letters using Nature's Word template. The style tags in the template should be deleted before submission.

5.3 Methods.

If brief (less than 200 words in total), they can be included in the text at an appropriate place.

Otherwise, they should be described at the end of the text in a 'Methods' section, subdivided by short, bold headings referring to methods used.

Descriptions of methods already published should be avoided; a reference number can be provided to save space, with the new addition or variation briefly stated.

5.4 References

are each numbered, ordered sequentially as they appear in the text, methods, tables, figure legends.

When cited in the text, reference numbers are superscript, not in brackets unless they are likely to be confused with a superscript number.

The maximum number of references, strictly enforced, is 50 for Articles and 30 for Letters. Only one publication can be listed for each number.

Only articles that have been published or submitted to a named publication should be in the reference list; papers in preparation should be mentioned in the text with a list of authors (or initials if any of the authors are co-authors of the present contribution).

Published conference abstracts, numbered patents and preprints on recognized servers may be included in reference lists, but text, grant details and acknowledgements may not.

All authors should be included in reference lists unless there are more than five, in which case only the first author should be given, followed by 'et al.'.

Please follow the style below in the published edition of Nature in preparing reference lists.

• Authors should be listed surname first, followed by a comma and initials of given names.
• Titles of all cited articles are required. Titles of articles cited in reference lists should be in upright, not italic text; the first word of the title is capitalized, the title written exactly as it appears in the work cited, ending with a full stop. Book titles are italic with all main words capitalized. Journal titles are italic and abbreviated according to common usage; authors can refer to Nature, the Index Medicus or the American Institute of Physics style manual for details.
• Volume numbers are bold. The publisher and city of publication are required for books cited. (Refer to published papers in Nature for details.)
• References to web-only journals should give authors, article title and journal name as above, followed by url in full - or doi if known - and the year of publication in parentheses.
• References to websites should give authors if known, title of cited page, url in full, and year of posting in parentheses.

5.5 Acknowledgements

are brief and follow the reference list. Authors are encouraged to include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. Acknowledgements do not contain grant or contribution numbers, or thanks to anonymous referees and editors, or effusive comments.

5.6 Competing interests and materials request statements

follow the Acknowledgements.

After the competing interests statement, authors should write a further statement reading"Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to xxxxx", with one e-mail address, followed by numbers for public database accession. Nature expects this identified author to respond to readers' enquiries and requests for materials, and to coordinate the handling of any other matters arising from the published contribution, including complaints. The author named as corresponding author is not necessarily the senior author, and publication of this author's name does not imply seniority.

5.7 Tables.

Tables should each be presented on a separate page, portrait (not landscape) orientiation, and upright on the page, not sideways.

Tables have a short, one-line title in bold text.

Upright roman (not bold or italic) type of the same size as the rest of the text is used. The body of the table should not contain horizontal or vertical rules; these will be added by Nature when necessary after the paper has been accepted for publication.

Tables should be as small as possible. Bear in mind the size of a Nature page as a limiting factor when compiling a table and ensure it will reduce appropriately.

Symbols and abbreviations are defined immediately below the table, followed by essential descriptive material as briefly as possible, all in double-spaced text.

5.8 Figure legends.

Figure legends should be listed one after the other, as part of the text document, separate from the figure files. Please do not write a legend below each figure.

Each figure legend should begin with a brief title for the whole figure and continue with a short description of each panel and the symbols used. For contributions with methods sections, legends should not contain any details of methods, or exceed 100 words (fewer than 500 words in total for the whole paper). In contributions without methods sections, legends should be fewer than 300 words (800 words or fewer in total for the whole paper).

All error bars must be defined in the figure legend, as discussed in Nature .

5.9 Figures

Nature requires figures in electronic format.

Articles and Letters should ideally have no more than 5 and 4 display items (figures and tables), respectively, all as small as is compatible with clarity. The goal is for figures to be comprehensible to readers in other or related disciplines, and to assist their understanding of the paper.

Unnecessary figures and parts (panels) of figures should be avoided: data presented in small tables or histograms, for instance, can generally be stated briefly in the text instead.

Keep figures as simple as possible for clarity: avoid unnecessary complexity, colouring and excessive detail.

Figures should not contain more than one panel unless the parts are logically connected; each panel of a multipart figure should be sized so that the whole figure can be reduced by the same amount and reproduced on the printed page at the smallest size at which essential details are visible and the panels, when assembled, are square or rectangular shaped. A Nature page is 178 mm wide and 245 mm deep, so no figure can be larger than this (the vast majority of figures are much smaller).

Amino-acid sequences should be printed in Courier (or other monospaced) font using the one-letter code in lines of 50 or 100 characters.

Some brief guidance for figure preparation:
Lettering in figures (labelling of axes and so on) should be in lower-case type, with the first letter capitalized and no full stop.

Units should have a single space between the number and the unit, and follow SI nomenclature or the nomenclature common to a particular field. Thousands should be separated by commas (1,000). Unusual units or abbreviations are defined in the legend.

Scale bars should be used rather than magnification factors, with the length of the bar defined in the legend rather than on the bar itself.

Layering type directly over shaded or textured areas and using reversed type (white lettering on a coloured background) should be avoided where possible.

Where possible, text, including keys to symbols, should be provided in the legend rather than on the figure itself. (See published issues of Nature for guidance.)

A contribution towards the total cost of reproduction of colour figures is requested. Inability to pay this charge will not prevent publication of colour figures judged essential by the editors.

At submission, figures should be at good enough resolution to be assessed by referees, ideally as JPEGs. Very high-resolution figures are often too large to send to referees or between Nature's editorial offices, although they are required if the paper is eventually accepted for publication.

At submission, figures should be clearly labelled with the corresponding author's name, Nature reference number when known, and the figure number/part. In preparing figures for submission, each should be a separate, clearly labelled file, with a clear indication of how parts of each figure (if any) should be assembled on the printed page.

Authors who cannot submit online and are instead submitting by mail should provide figures on disk, clearly labelled with corresponding author's name, a list of the figure numbers/parts on the disk and formats used, and file types. Authors submitting by mail must also provide one set of hard-copy figures in a separate, clearly marked envelope with a set of photocopies, one for each figure, with the panels (if any) arranged into a rectangular shape as they will appear in the published paper. These hard-copy original figures should be of the highest possible quality, as Nature will scan them into electronic form to send to reviewers if unable to use digital files from authors' disks.

5.10 Production-quality figures.

When a manuscript is accepted in principle for publication, the editor will ask for high-resolution figures. Do not submit publication-quality figures until asked to do so by an editor. They must be prepared according to guidelines. We suggest you download these instructions before preparing the final version of figures.

5.11 Supplementary Information

This is online-only, peer-reviewed material that is essential background to the Article or Letter (for example, large data sets), but which is too large or impractical to be included in the printed version of the paper. SI is not necessary for Brief Communications. See the Supplementary Information page for further details.

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