Rediscover your Nature

Rediscover your Nature

A message from Dr Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature: From today, Nature has a new look, a clearer structure, and contains new types of content. Above all, our underlying goal is greater clarity in the reading experience, and this blog post describes a few of the changes we’ve made to this end. More details are given in the official press release. For authors of original research and commissioned articles we provide an improved online template for the full-text version of articles (an example is here, free to access online). We’ve also updated and clarified Nature‘s guide to authors,  … Read more

New online article layout for Nature journals

New online article layout for Nature journals

Several of the Nature journals have a new online article layout, a two-column format that increases on-screen article readability while providing enhanced navigation and a flexible set of tools. For more details of what is included, download a PDF showing the key aspects. Journals so far in the new template include Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Chemistry, Nature Communications, Nature Genetics, Nature Immunology, Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, Nature Neuroscience and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. The rest of the Nature journals will adopt the new design over the coming months. An example of an article in the new  … Read more

Comment articles on genetics and genomics research

Comment articles on genetics and genomics research

From the Editors of Nature Reviews Genetics ( 11, 309; 2010): Since the launch of Nature Reviews Genetics almost a decade ago, we have used a variety of ways to communicate the most important advances in genetics and genomics. As well as the classic Review format, our Perspective, Analysis and Progress articles have enabled authors to tackle topics in a range of useful and interesting ways. This month’s issue (May) sees our first Comment article, a new format that we hope you will find engaging and informative. As the name suggests, Comment articles allow authors to provide a commentary on  … Read more

How to break new ground in the era of “big science”

How to break new ground in the era of "big science"

Leslie Sage, a senior editor at Nature, and Joanne Baker, Nature‘s Books & Arts editor and a former observational cosmologist, write from the astronomy perspective about the risks of ’big science’ in Nature Physics (6, 233; 2010). From their article: Astronomy is in an era of unprecedented change. Once the preserve of a dedicated few who travelled to remote observatories to investigate the heavens, the discipline is now ‘big science’, carried out on an industrial scale by a workforce of postdocs. Just as bankers have been seduced by the sophistication of computer analyses, more and more astronomy papers are showing  … Read more

Storing data forever

Storing data forever

From Nature Geoscience 3, 219 (May 2010) Unlike accountants, scientists need to store their data forever. This expanding task requires dedication, expertise and substantial funds. Data are at the heart of scientific research. Therefore, all data and metadata should be stored — forever, and accessibly. But it would be naïve to think that such a ‘gold standard’ of preservation could be achieved. In one spectacular example of the failure of science to save its treasures, some of NASA’s early satellite data were erased from the high-resolution master tapes in the 1980s. The lost data could now help extend truly global  … Read more

Announcing Nature Climate Change

Announcing Nature Climate Change

From Olive Heffernan, Editor of Nature Reports Climate Change: Nature Reports Climate Change has published its final issue, on 5 May 2010. In practical terms, thais means that the site will no longer be updated, but the archived content will still be freely available online. Although an ending of sorts, the closure of Nature Reports Climate Change is necessary to facilitate what will ultimately be a much larger effort by Nature Publishing Group to cover climate change. In April 2011, we will launch Nature Climate Change, a full-fledged journal, whose mission will be to publish original research on climate change  … Read more

NSMB’s tips for revising your paper in response to reviewers

NSMB's tips for revising your paper in response to reviewers

From: Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 17, 389 (2010) Your paper went out to review, and after anxious waiting, you receive the letter asking for a revised paper. However, those ever-demanding editors and reviewers want more. One of the most important elements of a revision is the point-by-point response. Here are some tips for making it more effective. Keep to the point. We [the NSMB editors] internally call this a point-by-point rather than a rebuttal, implying that it makes a series of points in response to each point raised by the reviewers. We will, and indeed have, read through 17-page  … Read more

Nature Communications, a new multidisciplinary journal

Nature Communications, a new multidisciplinary journal

From Nature 464, 958 ( 2010): This month sees the launch of the seventeenth Nature journal, Nature Communications. All the previous Nature research journals have focused on a particular discipline or community of research interests. Their aim is to publish the most original and scientifically impact-making research appropriate to those particular audiences. Their high ranking in the citation league tables would suggest that this goal is generally being fulfilled. Nature Communications differs in being multidisciplinary. It aims not to compete with the established Nature journals, but to publish rigorous and comprehensive papers that represent advances of significance to specialists within  … Read more

Nature Geoscience on the pros and cons of online publication

Nature Geoscience on the pros and cons of online publication

Online publishing has blurred the boundary between accepted and published articles, a topic discussed in an Editorial this month (April) in Nature Geoscience ( 3,219; 2010) . From the Editorial: With the advent of online publication over the past 10 years, it no longer needs to take months or years for an accepted paper to become available to journal subscribers, and the term ‘monthly journal’ is losing its meaning. Articles are published online weeks to months before publication in print, with benefits all round: authors can make their peer-reviewed results available to the scientific community quickly, readers can keep abreast  … Read more