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Epigenetic mechanisms are increasingly appreciated to have an important role in immune cell functional diversity and adaptability, and understanding these mechanisms holds considerable potential for revealing new opportunities to therapeutically modulate the immune response in a range of diseases.
This Nature Reprint Collection provides a compilation of some of the research papers that have contributed to the advances in the field of immune cell epigenetics, as well as reviews discussing aspects of this new and exciting field. The collection brings together articles from Nature, Nature Immunology, Nature Reviews Immunology and Nature Reviews Drug Discovery that have contributed to advances and discussions in the field of immune cell epigenetics.
The articles in this collection are freely available online until 30 April 2010.

More Nature Collections.
Nature Immunology supplements and focuses.

See also: Epigenetic Dynamics in the Immune System, a conference organized by Nature Immunology and Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 19 February 2010 in San Antonio, Texas.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 19, 2009
Categories: Author services, NPG special content | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group's managing director, Stephen Inchcoombe, has just written his annual letter to the company's customers. NPG's customers are varied: as well as authors and peer-reviewers, they include readers, subscribers, librarians, institutions, advertisers, suppliers, partners, sponsors, and more. The annual letter is, necessarily, broad, so I'll highlight here a few points of particular interest to authors:
--A new XML repository for nature.com and other infrastructure improvements are the foundations for NPG to deliver a new wave of applications in the coming year
--In April 2010 we will introduce Nature Communications, an online-only peer-reviewed journal offering rapid publication for high-quality research across the biological, chemical and physical sciences, with a mixed publishing model
--Nature Chemistry, launched in April 2009, showcases the kind of innovative publishing functionality we want to provide. Highlighting chemical compounds in articles, redrawing chemical structures to be machine-readable and enhanced chemical compound reference pages created by journal editors, all further the journal article's role as an integral part of the reader's workflow. These advances will be applied to Nature Chemical Biology, Nature and other NPG journals in the near future
--NPG now publishes 16 of the top 50 (32%) journals by Impact Factor, twice as many as any other scientific publisher
--Expanded content in Nature Medicine from January and significant improvements to Nature later in the year, with no commensurate price increases
--Closer integration of nature.com and Nature Network, our social network for scientists. Comments on online journal articles will become part of the commenter's Nature Network profile, acknowledging that contributions to the scientific record stretch far beyond the journal article itself
--Scientific American became part of NPG in 2009, after many years as a sister Holtzbrinck organization. Expect to see functionality, services and interlinking between Scientific American and NPG journals and resources from next year.

The whole letter is published at NPG's press website; we welcome your feedback and comments.
More information about Nature Publishing Group and its executive committee.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 25, 2009
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Are the days of print journals numbered — and if they are, what will that mean for how we interact with the scientific literature? These questions are asked in Nature Chemistry's September Editorial (1, 421; 2009). The Editorial is sparked by The American Chemical Society's announcement that, with the exception of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and two review journals, "ACS titles publishing primary research will be printed in a landscape fashion that puts two article pages side-by-side on a single physical page. These changes are accompanied by new pricing schemes that will eliminate discounts for hardcopy journals, while offering subscribers incentives to upgrade from print to digital formats." This is inevitably seen by several observers as a precursor to eliminating the print editions of these journals.
Although, as the Nature Chemistry Editorial notes, there are many advantages to the online journal format, both in terms of the content itself and in terms of the financial and environmental cost of the printed medium. The Editorial concludes: "in all likelihood, it will probably come to pass that as this century grows older, printed journals will be consigned to history. And in some ways, that would be a shame. Printed materials have their own charm and practicality — no batteries required! — and will always have a loyal following. Whereas some individuals may be happy to replace their dusty bookshelves and their contents with a plastic electronic reader of some description, many would shudder at the thought.
Moreover, should chemistry publishing become an online-only endeavour, the concept of 'issues' also comes into question. With the ability to dynamically group articles on a website using criteria such as dates or keywords, does journal content need to be collated into bite-sized chunks if print is no longer a consideration? And without issues, what becomes of cover images? These serve to advertise both the journal and people's work — many conference talks are proudly emblazoned with journal covers, as doubtless are many people's offices.
Assuming sustainable models, the continued co-existence of print and digital editions of journals (especially for those that publish more than just review and research articles) would satisfy the needs of all readers — but whether this is a realistic goal in the long term remains to be seen."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 01, 2009
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The Nature Medicine Podcast reports on cutting-edge news in biomedical research from around the globe, featuring interviews with experts and a review of the advances that scientists hope to translate from bench to bedside. Tune into the podcast to learn about breakthroughs and policy developments in medical research. The presenter, Molly Webster, began her broadcasting career at National Public Radio's Science Friday, where she is still a guest producer. She also creates shows for The Takeaway, a radio production spearheaded by Public Radio International, and writes for various scientific and environmental magazines and journals.
To subscribe for free to the Nature Medicine Podcast copy and paste this URL into iTunes or your preferred media player.
The archive page for Nature Medicine podcasts list all programmes from January 2009 to the present edition (currently 7 May 2009, in which you can listen in to find out how scientists are overcoming disabilities in the lab and for a recap of the biggest headlines in biomedicine).
Nature Medicine Podcast: current edition.
Nature Medicine journal home page.
Nature Medicine guide to authors.
About Nature Medicine.
All podcasts at nature.com.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 11, 2009
Categories: Author services, Communication, Public and media | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Methods follows in the footsteps of Nature by ushering in an online methods section, fully integrated with the paper, for all original research articles. Details of the service described in the journal's current (May) Editorial (Nature Methods 6, 313; 2009), and the editors welcome comments on the service at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog.
Daniel Evanko, Chief Editor of Nature Methods, writes: "We are relieved that we will no longer have to relegate important methodological details to Supplementary Information and we expect our authors will appreciate being able to include more citations in their papers. A potential downside of this change is that the print and online versions of papers have quite different levels of methodological detail. What do you think? Those of you who are online readers may not have very strong opinions on this, but what about our print readers? If anyone who regularly receives a print copy of the journal is reading this, we would like your feedback as well."
From the Editorial: "We expect that our readers and authors will appreciate the advantages that Online Methods bring to Nature Methods. With this change effectively increasing the length of Nature Methods papers—and more than doubling the length of Brief Communications—our authors will have far more space to communicate their new methodologies and cite previous work. But by limiting the increase in length to the methods section we continue to emphasize the value of succinct scientific reports. The body of the paper will remain short enough that casual readers can easily obtain the important information. The details required for more in-depth understanding or reproduction of the work will be easily accessible if needed. We hope our authors and readers are as excited by this change as we are."

Nature Methods journal website.
Nature Methods guide to authors.
Nature's formats for methods.
Methods in full, the Editorial announcing Nature's introduction of this service (Nature 445, 684; 2007).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 05, 2009
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Nature Structural and Molecular Biology provides some insight about Nature Publishing Group's press office in its April Editorial (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 16, 345; 2009), in particular how it assists authors to help make the general public more aware of the breakthroughs and insights provided by basic science research.
The Editorial describes the splash made by the publication of an article by J. Sui and colleagues on the isolation of monoclonal antibodies that could recognize a variety of influenza strains, paving the way for a broad-spectrum therapy against 'flu and giving hope for the development of a long-sought-after universal flu vaccine.
The NPG press office sends press releases to more than 3,000 registered journalists for articles published by all Nature journals, and helps coordinate press coverage by the media. With offices in the US and UK, NPG's press officers serve as first contacts for journalists both local and internatinally. From the NSMB Editorial:

"The NPG press office is notified of every manuscript that is accepted for publication and is responsible for coordinating the press release of manuscripts once publication dates have been set. For the Nature research journals, research articles are published online every Sunday, and the news embargo lifts at the time of publication on the journals' websites, at 1 p.m. US Eastern time (6 p.m. London time). The press office performs a variety of tasks as each article is prepared for publication. Importantly for our authors, the press office provides additional notification to the authors of a research paper the Tuesday before the particular Sunday a paper is scheduled to appear online, informing them of our embargo policies, which are strictly enforced. [Nature publishes research papers online twice a week.]
In a recently added service, press officers also contact relevant funding agencies and home institutions involved with the work. This gives adequate time for internal coverage by institutional public information or public affairs offices. Advance notice is particularly useful for large agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, that participate in a large number of research programs and may therefore be contacted about any number of forthcoming research publications.
With backgrounds in the biological and physical sciences, the NPG press officers write the press releases for newsworthy articles published in Nature. They also work with the editors at the Nature research journals to compose press releases for articles that may have wide public appeal. (Usually, articles whose findings have a direct connection to a disease may garner attention, though it can be difficult to predict what will catch the eyes of science journalists.) Author contact details accompany the highlighted papers within a release, along with a list of all papers that are being published in that journal in that particular week. On the Tuesday before the articles will be published online, the press office e-mails a compiled release covering Nature and the Nature research journals for that week to more than 3,000 registered science journalists and media organizations. In some special cases, the press office will also organize a press briefing, at which journalists can speak directly to the researchers about their work."
More about the NPG press office.
More about Advance Online Publication.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 06, 2009
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From the April issue of Nature Geoscience (2, 229; 2009):

Until now, the online submission system for Nature Geoscience has allowed prospective authors to contact the editors formally with a 'presubmission enquiry', consisting of an abstract and a brief cover letter. A small fraction of our authors have taken up this option, which promises a fast evaluation of the suitability in principle of a piece of research for publication in Nature Geoscience. We are now closing down this option.
Presubmission enquiries are useful in fields where the interest of a manuscript is readily apparent from a brief summary. We have found that in the geosciences, such a shortcut assessment is almost always impossible: the novelty and importance of a study usually relies on factors that can only be fully appreciated by reading the whole paper and often previous publications in the field.
We would hate to miss an interesting paper because of a badly written abstract. In response to a large proportion of presubmission enquiries we have therefore simply asked to see the full manuscript. Furthermore, we have always carefully considered full submissions of manuscripts that had previously received a discouraging response on a presubmission enquiry.
We feel that our authors are best served by a careful assessment of the suitability of their paper, based on all the necessary information, therefore we now encourage authors to submit their full manuscripts right away. Of course, for any brief and informal enquiries — regarding a manuscript submission or anything else — we can always be contacted at geoscience@nature.com.

The other Nature journals' presubmission enquiry service is described at the author and referees' website:
Presubmission enquiries :
Researchers may obtain informal feedback from editors before submitting the whole paper. This service is intended to save you time — if the editors feel it would not be suitable, you can submit the manuscript to another journal without delay. If you wish to use the presubmission enquiry service, please use the online system of the journal of your choice to send a paragraph explaining the importance of your paper, as well as the abstract or summary paragraph with its associated citation list so the editors may judge the paper in relation to other related work. The editors will quickly either invite you to submit the whole manuscript (which does not mean any commitment to publication), or will say that it is not suitable for the journal. If you receive a negative response, please do not reply. If you are convinced of the importance of your paper despite editors' reservations, you may submit the whole manuscript using the journal's online submission system. The editors can then make a more complete assessment of your work.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 02, 2009
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The journal Cell Death and Differentiation has a special issue on cell death mechanisms this month (16 (3), March 2009), containing an Editorial and three Reviews which are free to access online, as well as a collection of original research papers. From the introduction to the issue: "Although cell death occurs in many different ways, it uses several common and evolutionarily conserved mechanisms. These control distinct forms of cell demise ranging from necrosis and excitotoxicity to autophagy and apoptosis. This review series comprises state-of the art reviews, which summarise our knowledge of basic mechanisms of cell death in a context of different pathological processes. Articles, written by the leaders in the field, present a comprehensive picture of cell-death routines and their role in shaping diseases. This collection of papers should serve as a key resource to researchers in cell biology, neurobiology, oncology, biochemistry and pharmacology."

Archive of Cell Death and Differentiation special issues.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 12, 2009
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Splicing describes the removal of introns from pre-messenger RNAs to form messenger RNAs, and is carried out by a large complex, the spliceosome. This processing can have a profound effect on the regulation and number of gene products encoded by the genome. In addition, mutations in key components of the splicing machinery, as well as dysfunction of alternative splicing regulators, have been associated with disease, a new Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (NSMB) Web Focus on splicing, free to access online, compiles recent papers that have elucidated the organization, structure and regulation of spliceosomal components, thus shedding light on the mechanistic heart of splicing. An accompanying NPG library highlights recent insights into splicing and the regulation and impact of alternative splicing.
As part of the NSMB Focus, the journal presents a podcast, Splice Talk, consisting of interviews with Reinhard Lührmann, Andrew MacMillan and Christine Guthrie about their recent research and about the general topic of splicing.

NSMB Web Focus on Splicing.
NSMB Focus and Supplements index.
NSMB journal home page.
NSMB Guide to Authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 12, 2009
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From my colleagues in the Nature press office:

British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough presents his views on Charles Darwin, natural selection, and how the Bible has put the natural world in peril in an exclusive interview for Nature Video.
Talking about his new programme "Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life", to be broadcast on BBC One on 1 February 2009, Attenborough singles out the book of Genesis as the root cause of man's exploitation and devastation of the planet, and explains that evolution is vitally important because it inextricably places man as part of the natural world. He also gives a personal insight into his 50-year career as a science broadcaster and life-long campaigner for evolution.
Access the video free on Nature’s YouTube site.

Nature' s YouTube video channel index page is here, from which you can access our other videos, also free.

Nature's video archive at the journal website.

Nature's multimedia index page.

David Attenborough's recent troubles with creationists are described at End of the Pier Show, the personal blog of Nature senior editor Henry Gee, and at The Great Beyond (Nature's science news blog).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2009
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One year has passed since Nature Geoscience presented its first issue to the public, yet for the journal's editors the excitement of seeing each monthly issue composed in print and online has not worn off. They are delighted to note the public's interest in the geosciences: "even the James Bond villain now deals in water, not nuclear weapons, and our articles have been reported in outlets ranging from the Metro (a free London newspaper) to the New York Times.
We have learned a lot about planet Earth and other planetary bodies over the past year. For that, we would particularly like to thank all our authors and referees — their contributions to the journal are highly valued.
To celebrate the first complete annual cycle of Nature Geoscience issues, we are pleased to present free online access to our favourite pieces, assembled entirely subjectively. This compilation is intended to give an idea of the spread of topics and formats we publish; more can, of course, be found in the full issues.
We look forward to receiving and publishing further interesting papers, opinionated commentaries, learned overviews and last, but not least, adventurous backstories. We hope you too look forward to reading more about the geosciences in 2009 and beyond."
From Nature Geoscience 2, 1 (2009).
First anniversary highlights from the journal (free to access online).
Nature Geoscience guide to authors.
Submit your manuscript to Nature Geoscience.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 13, 2009
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The journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics presents Adolescent Medicine, a free web focus that compiles important articles on topics pertinent to adolescents, conditions that afflict them, and strategies for management. Adolescence is a period of accelerated growth and change, bridging the metamorphosis from childhood to adulthood. In addition to physical maturation, adolescents experience psychological maturation, which affects behaviour, patterns of learning, and the adaptation to adult abilities of cognition. Throughout this transition, challenges arise that carry the potential for negative long-term health impact. Examples include the onset of obesity associated with type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome; sexual experimentation and an increased incidence of sexually transmitted disease; initiation of cigarette smoking, alcohol, and substance abuse; and reduced adherence to treatment regimens for chronic diseases that have an onset in childhood. Effective measures for prevention and treatment require a comprehensive understanding of the differences and difficulties associated with this fascinating period of life.
Adolescent Medicine, a web focus of articles published in seven journals published by Nature Publishing Group.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 22, 2008
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Nature's latest Insight collection of reviews (Nature 456, 719–744; 2008) is on the topic of quantitative genetics. Recent revolutions in genomic technologies have led to a renewed interest in quantitative genetics. One of the main areas of study is the genetic basis of complex traits, which proved difficult to investigate until the advent of genome-wide association studies. Findings from a wide variety of organisms — from plants to mice to humans — are now markedly improving our understanding of how genotype contributes to phenotype. Two articles from this Insight are free to access online for one month from date of publication (11 December 2008):
Commentary: A global network for investigating the genomic epidemiology of malaria
The Malaria Genomic Epidemiology Network
Review: Reverse engineering the genotype–phenotype map with natural genetic variation
Matthew V. Rockman.
Futher information about the field of quantitative genetics can be found in the introductory article of this Insight (also free to access online) by Chris Gunter.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 16, 2008
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Every week, the Editors of Nature China survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from mainland China and Hong Kong and provide a summary of the results. If you are interested in, say, nanotechnology, here are some recent highlights posted on Nature China:
Carbon nanotubes: Domino drive
The potential energy stored in a carbon nanotube can be harnessed to power tiny devices.
Nanofibres: Bright belts
Rare-earth-based nanofibres and microbelts can produce an entire rainbow of colours for electronic displays.
Fullerenes: Symmetry breakers
Researchers in Xiamen are close to making symmetry-breaking buckminsterfullerenes.
Carbon nanotubes: From stress to strength
Prestressed multiwalled carbon nanotubes have enhanced mechanical properties that are ideal for building space elevators.

Register for Nature China e-alerts, and stay abreast of the latest research in your field from mainland China and Hong Kong.
Nature China main index page.
Nature China subject archive.
About Nature China.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 20, 2008
Categories: Author services, Disciplines | Permalink | Comments (0)

As the number of human beings with their genomes fully sequenced ticks higher and direct-to-consumer gene profiling companies push the limits of what medical genetics can do, the once fantastical notion that any given human can walk into a doctor’s office with his or her genome on a hard drive looks more and more like a reality.
Still the question remains to be answered: how do we use this wealth of information? A Nature web focus presents the challenges this approaching reality poses for technology, the legal and ethical confines of research, and the ability of genomics to translate into clinical utility. Here you’ll also find the latest additions to the human genome menagerie: sequenced individuals from Africa and Asia. Access selected content fro the web focus free online, and listen to the special features on personal human genomes in the free Nature Podcast.
Discuss the Commentaries on personal genomics (free to access online until 6 December) at Nature Network.
The Nature Human Genome Collection
Nature Web Focus: Hap Map
Read on as Nature blogs from the 58th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics in Philadelphia from 11(today) to 15 November 2008.

Continue reading "Personal genomics: Nature web focus" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 11, 2008
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Cell polarity relies on the asymmetric organization of cellular components and functions. It is implicated in the differentiation, proliferation and morphogenesis of unicellular and multicellular organisms, and its dysregulation can cause developmental disorders and cancer. This month (November), Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology presents a Focus on Cell Polarity, free to access online for the month of November, which aims to capture the current state of cell polarity research in a range of different systems by dissecting the underlying principles. The Focus includes five Review articles by leaders in the field, and the topics range from organelle positioning, cytoskeletal dynamics and mechanisms of protein sorting, targeting and distribution in polarized cells, to crosstalk between small GTPases and polarity proteins, and the mechanisms that coordinate the assembly of cells into polarized tissues.
Cell polarity Focus, including table of contents.
Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology Editorial summarizing the Cell polarity Focus.
Library of articles from Nature Publishing Group journals on the topic of cell polarity.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 03, 2008
Categories: Author services | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nature's Insight on neuropsychiatric diseases (Nature 455, 889-923; 2008) is free to access online for six months from the issue date (16 October 2008). Neuropsychiatric diseases, such as schizophrenia, depression and autism, are a huge burden on society, impairing the health of those affected, as well as their ability to learn and to work. Progress in defining the biological basis of these diseases is now being made. Technological advances in the areas of genomics and large-scale studies, as well as the development of new animal models, are improving our understanding of these diseases and are offering the prospect of fundamentally different options for treatment.
Nature editors I-han Chou and Tanguy Chouard write in their introduction to the Insight (Nature 455, 889; 2008):
Since the time of ancient Egypt, societies have struggled to understand mental illness and to care for those affected by it. But, over the millennia, the idea that mental illness might have a biological cause arose only intermittently, and treatments ranged from the benign (exercise, humour and music) to the barbaric (exorcism, imprisonment and lobotomy). By the mid-twentieth century, however, several breakthroughs had been made. Not only did health professionals understand mental illnesses to be diseases of the brain, but a set of systematic criteria for diagnosis had been developed, together with pharmaceutical and psychological therapies that are still central to modern psychiatry.
Today, despite decades of subsequent research, the prevalence of neuropsychiatric diseases has not decreased. Our understanding of the biological mechanisms of diseases such as mood disorders, schizophrenia and autism is frustratingly limited. And, although it has long been clear that most such diseases have a strong genetic component, the identities of the genes involved have proved elusive. There is also a lack of reliable biological markers for characterizing these diseases and, perhaps unsurprisingly, treatment options are far from optimal in terms of efficacy and specificity.
There is, however, some cause for optimism. Recent advances in genomic technology and large-scale studies are helping to identify genetic variants associated with diseases. In addition, new animal models of disorders such as depression and autism are providing ways to test hypotheses about the underlying neuropathology — at the molecular, neural-circuit and behavioural levels. This Insight highlights recent successes and new ideas in this crucial area of research. The hope is that developments such as these will lead to integrative approaches for designing better therapeutic strategies.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 29, 2008
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A revolution in genomic science is underway. The reign of Sanger sequencing is coming to an end as a new generation of sequencing technologies allows vastly greater volumes of sequence information to be produced quickly and at an ever-decreasing cost. Nature Reviews Genetics and Nature Genetics present a free poster and a podcast on next-generation sequencing technologies, their myriad applications and challenges for the future.

From Nature Reviews Genetics (9, 811;2008): 'Next-generation' is a catch-all term for a range of approaches that differ in the way templates are prepared, the sequencing chemistry itself and the methods used to generate a sequence read-out. The poster, authored by Michael Metzker, enables readers to quickly grasp the methods that form the basis of the leading commercially available technologies and explains how they provide such high-throughput information so rapidly. Understanding how these technologies work is also key to appreciating which approach is best suited to which application.
The podcast brings to listeners insights from an international group of leading researchers in genetic and genomic research, exploring how next-generation sequencing technologies are being applied to fields as diverse as cancer research, small RNA biology and population genetics. Change is predicted to be rapid. According to one interviewee, sixty times more data than have so far been held in the world's nucleotide databases will be generated in just a year by one project alone. Highlighting the excitement surrounding these technologies, a Nature news story revealed one company's plans to sequence individual human genomes for $1,000 within a year.

The free poster and podcast are available here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 28, 2008
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Nature Publishing Group has created a web focus ‘Metabolic Syndrome 2008’ — showcasing a collection of original research articles from our academic and clinical practice journals that provide further insight into this global disease. Metabolic syndrome affects nearly 50 million Americans — almost one in four American adults. Approximately seven per cent of adults in their 20s and about 40 per cent of adults over the age of 40 meet the criteria for the syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together and increase the risk for heart disease, stroke and diabetes. Having just one of these conditions — increased blood pressure, elevated insulin levels, excess body fat around the waist or abnormal cholesterol levels — contributes to the risk of serious disease and in combination, the risk is even greater. There is no accepted or official definition of metabolic syndrome. Whether these risk factors actually can be referred to as a syndrome, they represent a growing medical condition involving multiple medical specialties. This free collection provides valuable insight into this emerging medical and public health epidemic.

‘Metabolic Syndrome 2008’ features content from the following journals:
• American Journal of Hypertension
• European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
• The International Journal of Impotence Research: The Journal of Sexual Medicine
• International Journal of Obesity
• Journal of Human Hypertension
• Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine
• Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology & Metabolism
• Obesity

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 21, 2008
Categories: Author services, Education, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The activation of a single neuron in the brain may be enough to help restore muscle activity in the arms of paralysed patients with spinal cord injuries. Chet T. Moritz, Steve I. Perlmutter and Eberhard E. Fetz report their research in Nature (doi:10.1038/nature07418) showing that a potential treatment for paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury is to route control signals from the brain around the injury by artificial connections. These results are the first demonstration that direct artificial connections between cortical cells and muscles can compensate for interrupted physiological pathways and restore volitional control of movement to paralysed limbs.
The implications of this research are covered by Nature News in a story that is free to access online. The authors discuss their work in this week's Nature Podcast.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2008
Categories: Animal experiments, Author benefits, Author services | Permalink | Comments (0)

In its October 2008 issue, Nature Reviews Genetics presents a Supplement on Genomic Medicine in Developing Countries. At the point when the theory is about to be translated into practice in genomic medicine, this collection of five Perspective articles describes human genome variation studies taking place in Mexico, India, Thailand, and South Africa. The articles in the Supplement discuss the challenges and opportunities facing these and other countries in the developing world as they begin to harness genomics for the benefit of their populations, and highlights areas in which the international human genomics community needs to take a more forward-thinking approach. The Supplement is free to access online.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 29, 2008
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The Big Data special package of articles in this week’s issue of Nature (4 September 2008) looks at how massive influxes of data are changing the way science is done in many fields, and includes a feature story on ‘Wikiomics’ that might be of particular interest to the scientists who work with "web 2.0" tools. Coping with floods of data is now one of science's biggest challenges, so the Nature special issue assess the need to complement smart science with smart searching; looks at what the next Google will be; interviews the pioneering biologists who are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data; and recalls that the first mass data crunchers were not computers, but the remarkable women of Harvard's Observatory. All the articles, as well as downloadable PDFs of the print versions, are free online for two weeks from the publication date. We encourage you to download everything you are interested in—and then to spread the word to friends and colleagues about what you like (and don’t like!) via email, blog, by commenting online at the Nature website, or other means. And of course, Nature always welcomes Correspondence submissions.
The contents of the Big Data 'special' in full:
Editorial: Community cleverness required
Researchers need to adapt their institutions and practices in response to torrents of new data — and need to complement smart science with smart searching.
Special Report: The next Google
Ten years ago this month, Google's first employee turned up at the garage where the search engine was originally housed. What technology at a similar early stage today will have changed our world as much by 2018? Nature asked some researchers and business people to speculate — or lay out their wares. Their responses are wide ranging, but one common theme emerges: the integration of the worlds of matter and information, whether it be by the blurring of boundaries between online and real environments, touchy-feely feedback from a phone or chromosomes tucked away on databases.
Party of One column: Data wrangling
Collecting and releasing environmental data have stirred up controversy in Washington, says David Goldston, and will continue to do so.
Features: Welcome to the petacentre
What does it take to store bytes by the tens of thousands of trillions? Cory Doctorow meets the people and machines for which it's all in a day's work.
Features: Wikiomics
Pioneering biologists are trying to use wiki-type web pages to manage and interpret data, reports Mitch Waldrop. But will the wider research community go along with the experiment?
Commentary: How do your data grow?
Scientists need to ensure that their results will be managed for the long haul. Maintaining data takes big organization, says Clifford Lynch.
Books & Arts: Distilling meaning from data
Buried in vast streams of data are clues to new science. But we may need to craft new lenses to see them, explain Felice Frankel and Rosalind Reid.
Essay: The Harvard computers
The first mass data crunchers were people, not machines. Sue Nelson looks at the discoveries and legacy of the remarkable women of Harvard's Observatory.
Review: The future of biocuration
To thrive, the field that links biologists and their data urgently needs structure, recognition and support. Doug Howe, Maria Costanzo, Petra Fey, Takashi Gojobori, Linda Hannick, Winston Hide, David P. Hill, Renate Kania, Mary Schaeffer, Susan St Pierre, Simon Twigger, Owen White & Seung Yon Rhee
Podcast Extra: Big Data
As Google celebrates its 10th anniversary, we find out how science is coping with massive datasets generated by unprecedented computing power. BoingBoing blogger Cory Doctorow tells us about his visits to the LHC data storage facility and the genome sequencing Sanger Centre.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 08, 2008
Categories: Access, Author services, Data availability | Permalink | Comments (0)

When the Nature Methods editors sat down last year to select a Method of the Year for 2007, it was with the firm intention of initiating a yearly tradition. This year, the editors are are asking for your opinion, so please nominate candidate methods as well as vote and comment on posted suggestions.

From the editorial in the September issue of Nature Methods (5, 749; 2008):
The Method of the Year event is a celebration of methods development and innovation because we think that methods developers should have their share of the limelight. It is also a fun opportunity to assemble Commentaries, technical information and news items about a method we consider particularly important among the developments that we, as editors, continuously observe across a broad range of disciplines. But we also wanted to take the pulse at the bench and see what you, with firsthand experience, think of recent methods developments. This online one-click voting and nomination process is your opportunity to speak up.
We are interested in methods that have come into their own in 2008 and have had a proven impact, but also in your views on burgeoning methods which, while they are not quite ready for prime time, are worth watching.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 03, 2008
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In its June 2008 issue, Nature Methods presents a free-access focus on single-molecule techniques. Biologists are becoming increasingly interested in methodologies that can examine the mechanism of action of fundamental biological processes at the molecular level. The Nature Methods focus consists of four review articles that provide practical guidance for some of the techniques that are most integral to in vitro single-molecule experiments. These cover single-molecule fluorescence methods; microfluidic flow cells to manipulate experimental conditions during experiments; and force-spectroscopy techniques such as atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical traps to manipulate individual molecules themselves.
From the focus's Editorial: The ability to analyse biological systems at the single-molecule level opens avenues of investigation that are not possible using techniques that measure aggregate properties of molecular populations. This new vantage point can yield important insights. A textbook example is that of molecular motors. Although classical biological assays for motor function show that these molecules support constant-velocity movement, studies of individual molecules revealed that they take discrete individual steps. The technique that allowed these crucial biological observations came from the physics field in 1986—a momentous year that saw the first demonstration not only of the optical tweezers technique used in the subsequent molecular motor study but also of the atomic force microscope. Created by physicists, these force-spectroscopy methods form much of the backbone of the field of research now devoted to studying biological systems at the single-molecule level."

Please read on at the Nature Methods focus website. Comments from readers are welcome at Methagora, the Nature Methods blog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 10, 2008
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Venture capital is a key part of growing a start-up company, but can be fraught with problems. Nature Biotechnology is gathering together a group of seasoned chief executives, venture capitalists and a venture lawyer at a one-day event 'Bioentrepreneur beware: CEO war stories on investor nightmares', to discuss what can go wrong during the financing process, including term-sheet negotiations that seriously dilute equity, rounds that fall through at the last second, investor activism and hostile takeover of board seats. Take the opportunity to participate in a lively panel discussion that will explore key issues when borrowing other people’s money and ways that you can ensure investor and management goals are compatible with your biotechnology business. The meeting will take place on 20 May 2008 at The Meritage Resort, Napa, California, and is free to attend. The speakers and programme, and more details, can be found here. For information and to register, please send full company name and contact details by email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 22, 2008
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Via Hilary Spencer, Nature Precedings has just introduced some new features.
Comment notifications: authors can opt to receive notification when new comments are added to their Nature Precedings document by checking a box during the submission process. Commenters can also opt to receive notification of when someone responds to their comment.
Watermarks on PDFs: the DOI (or Handle) and date of posting are now embedded in all PDFs on Nature Precedings. By embedding the identifier in the document, readers can correctly reference or cite the document, even when they have received the document via email or accessed it via a “deep-link”.
Document thumbnails serve as a memory aid and preview; they can also be embedded in blogs and webpages.
Please join the Nature Precedings group on Nature Network to receive updates and make suggestions about the site, as well as to join the conversations between Hilary, Timo Hannay and Nature Precedings users and authors.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 12, 2008
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Nature has introduced a web-based production tracking system for research manuscripts that have been accepted for publication, which we hope will bring many benefits for authors. In the first phase at Nature, authors are able to access a website to download the journal's edited version of the text of their accepted manuscript, so they can make their corrections and upload the revised version back into the system. Very soon afterwards, the typeset PDF, laid out and complete with figures and/or tables, can also be uploaded and checked by the authors.
According to a survey of authors who have been testing the system in the past few weeks, a substantial majority strongly agreed that the new process is easy to operate and, for those who had published in Nature before, 100 per cent found the new system easier. One author wrote: "If it will always remain this efficient and user friendly, it is an easy, professional way of taking a manuscript through the production process." Another said: "I found the responses by the Nature staff to email queries were very impressive, being both very rapid and very helpful."
The system is being further developed, already being in use in several of the Nature monthly journals. We will keep authors informed as we introduce new components.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 18, 2008
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A free poster, by Matthias P. Wymann, Thomas Rückle, Christian Rommel, Matthias Schwarz and Roger Schneiterfrom, is published this month (February) by Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology . The poster provides an overview of the protein--lipid signalling network, and how this network can be exploited pharmacologically in the study of proliferative, inflammatory and metabolic diseases. It accompanies a review article by Matthias P. Wymann and Roger Schneiter in Nature Reviews Molecular and Cell Biology (9, 162-176; 2008), which also contains a Web Focus on Lipids.
View the poster as a high-resolution PDF.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 07, 2008
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The Nature Physics editors (Nature Physics 4, 81; 2008) want to hear from physicists what kind of tools would help in managing the ever-growing tide of information from, and the exciting possibilities of, the internet. One hundred years ago, communication was relatively slow, and scientists attended conferences to find out what was going on outside their own place of work; now, we live in an environment in which there is an over-abundance of data-rich information that is a challenge to assimilate. What tools do scientists most need to communicate, share and organize information in the most meaningful, or "filtered", way? Nature Publishing Group has already created several such tools, for example Connotea, a reference management system, and Nature Network, a social website for various kinds of specialist discussion forums. The editors would like to hear from readers about the tools they would like to see developed. Please send them an email if you have suggestions you'd like to make, or drop a comment to this post.
Nature Physics February 2008 Editorial: A tangled web we weave.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 06, 2008
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Martijn J. Schuemie and Jan A. Kors (Bioinformatics doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btn006 ) have created a freely available web-based application that, on the basis of a sample text, can suggest "journals and experts who have published similar articles". Their aim is to help scientists to determine which journal is most appropriate for publishing their results, and which other scientists can be called upon to review their work. The application is called Jane (for journal/author name estimator).
I inputted some sample text to Jane, and was told that the Saudi Medical Journal was my top choice. No disrespect to that journal, but I know (because I am a person and not a computer) that this journal would be inappropriate for my test sample in at least two ways.
I would not primarily recommend an automatic selector to authors trying to decide where to submit their articles. When someone is ready to submit a paper, she or he will have given talks about the work and circulated drafts for comments from others in the field. That is a good time to ask for suggestions and advice about journals in which to publish. The scientist is then well-advised to read the author guidance on a few journals' websites, to find out about editorial scope, impact factor and so on.
I think it is possibly counter-productive to use this kind of text-based comparison system on its own for making decisions about journal submission. At Nature, for example, we are looking for novel results, not something similar to what we have just published. Other journals are the same – most of them are looking for distinctive articles, not incremental repeats.
Rather than relying on computer searches to choose where to submit, I highly recommend looking at our free Author and Reviewers’ website for writing and submission advice. From there one can go straight to a great set of articles written by professional journal editors about how, where and why to submit and publish at the free science-information website SciDev.Net.
In addition, scientists can upload a draft manuscript into a community preprint server, where others in the field can comment and suggest. (Nature Precedings is one such, which provides meta-features such as alerting people in the field when new preprints have been uploaded, but many others. ArXiv is another, for the physical sciences.)
I think it will be a sad day when science journals publish “articles selected for us by computer”.
(I first read about Jane at Nature Network in a post by Graham Steel.)

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 31, 2008
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One of the longest, and longest-lasting, Nature Network discussions in which I have participated is called "High Impact made by famous ones", started in October 2007 by a graduate student known as "Universal research" as part of the "Ask the Nature editor" forum.
The forum, incidentally, is hosted by the editors of Nature Network, and is for scientists who want to learn more about getting their work published in Nature and the Nature journals, and about careers in scientific editing, straight from the editors of these journals. You are welcome to join the group and post your questions.
Returning to the discussion thread about those "famous ones". The Nature and Nature journal editors who regularly handle manuscript submissions provide their answers to a wide range of questions, including whether being well-known or having a stellar track-record is more likely to get your mansucript sent for peer-review or published (answer: no); blinding of the peer-review process (double-blinding gets an airing, but Nature journal editors explain why they feel the system of single-blinding is best for scientists); duplicate publication (or "salami slicing" as it is often known); and independence of editors from those whose work is being considered.
This thread may not be the longest or the oldest that I have ever seen, but it is certainly among the most focused and useful for authors, and I highly recommend you read it for a unique insight into the editors' thought-processes. If you are at the start of your publishing career as a scientist, you are likely to find this forum very helpful. We welcome you there.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2008
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"Arthur Kornberg was one of the greatest biochemists of the twentieth century. His career spanned more than 60 years, and such has been the impact of his work on modern biomedical science that his influence will endure for decades." So opens Nature's obituary of Arthur Kornberg, by Tania Baker, at Nature 450, 809; 2007.
Boyana Konforti, Chief Editor of Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, has asked close colleagues to contribute their thoughts and recollections about Kornberg, who died last October. These reminiscences have now been compiled and published together, along with photos, as a permanent record and tribute in the pages of Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. Boyana writes: "In writing these remembrances of Arthur, we have all tried to capture a bit of what he was like, and what working with him meant to us, in the hope that those who knew him will have even richer memories to share and—more importantly—those who didn't know him will get a glimpse of him through our memories. To my mind it is these personal stories (and many more like them) that will be his longest-lasting legacy". The tributes can be seen here: A Tribute to Arthur Kornberg 1918-2007 (Nature Structural & Molecular Biology 15, 2 - 17; 2008). Contributors are Robert S. Fuller, Robert A. Bambara, Tania Baker, Barbara Funnell, Elmar Wahle, Michael O'Donnell, Dale Kaiser, Kirsten Skarstad, Boyana Konforti, Satoko Maki, Tsutomu Katayama, Kazuhisa Sekimizu, Joel H. Weiner, Ronald W. Davis, Lee Rowen, Myron F. Goodman, James Spudich, Suzanne Pfeffer, Charles C. Richardson, Piotr Polaczek, RIch Calendar, Richard Kolodner, Jack Griffith, Bruce Stillman, Paul Modrich, Charles Brenner and Charley Yanofsky.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 14, 2008
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The historic moments in modern science reported in Nature can now be explored online. The archive of the first 80 years (1869-1949) of the journal Nature, the world's foremost weekly scientific journal, is now live. Every article published in Nature, back to volume 1, issue 1 is now available online.
Nature’ s archive reveals a wealth of treasures from the first years of the journal, including the first observation of X-rays (Wilhelm Röntgen, 1896), the discovery of the electron (J.J. Thomson, 1897), the first fossil evidence that humans originated in Africa (Raymond Dart, 1925), and the discovery of the neutron (James Chadwick, 1932).
Containing more than 4,000 issues and an estimated 180,000 articles, the 1869-1949 archive completes the digitization of Nature. The project has taken 5 years to complete, beginning with the launch of the 1987-1996 archive in 2003. There is a special web feature, The history of the journal Nature, featuring timelines, video interviews and profiles of all Nature 's (surprisingly few) Editors since the journal was founded.
In places, Nature’s early archive reads like science fiction, with its foretelling of science and technology we take for granted today. The forensic use of fingerprints in solving crime was suggested as early as 1880: "When bloody finger-marks or impressions on clay, glass &c., exist, they may lead to the scientific identification of criminals." Scotland Yard introduced fingerprint identification in 1901, based on an 1892 book by Francis Galton. Motion-capture photograph pioneer Edward Muybridge suggested the development of the ‘photo finish’ in Nature in 1880. Lamenting the 'dead heat' in horse racing, he asked why officials would not "avail themselves of the same resources of science" and employ up to 20 cameras to decide the rightful outcome of races. It would be more than 50 years before the ‘photo finish’ became widely used in sport.
Articles in the Nature archive 1869-1949 are available as PDFs of the original journal article, with HTML abstracts. Access is by site license for institutions, or articles can be purchased individually.
A selection of Nature’s "greatest hits", including the article by Dart, and Watson and Crick’s 1953 paper that deciphers the structure of DNA, are featured in A century of Nature, some of which is free for a limited time.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 08, 2008
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Bali has not been the only island that has just hosted a climate-change conference. The BBC World Service's Digital Planet today runs a short feature and podcast about Nature Publishing Group's Second Nature, an archipelago of islands in Second Life, in which climate scientists – or their representational avatars – have been hosting talks and discussions. Timo Hannay, publishing director at Nature Publishing Group, describes how we went about achieving this series of virtual talks in a podcast which is available for one week only (until Tuesday 25 December) via the Digital Planet site.
Full reports of the Second Nature conference are at Joanna Scott's Nature Network blog. A brief description of the virtual conference's aims is here, with full presentations, Q/As and slides of the first two talks, by Tara LaForce of Imperial College London and Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College London.
You can follow our coverage of the real UN climate change conference at Climate Feedback blog -- just keep scrolling, there are many excellent posts from Olive Heffernan, Editor of Nature Reports Climate Change, who was in Bali for the duration.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 18, 2007
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Nature is holding a series of events on Second Life to coincide with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali, from 3 to 14 December. Second Nature is hosting talks by a range of speakers including Dr Simon Buckle, Director of Climate Change Policy at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change ; Dr Tara LaForce, Imperial College on her research on carbon capture and storage; Professor Euan Nisbet of Royal Holloway College London; and George Monbiot, Guardian columnist and author of the book Heat: How to stop the planet burning. All events are free, open to all, and will be held on our flagship Second Nature island: further details are available from Joanna Scott's Second Life blog on Nature Network.
Nature's archipelago of three virtual islands in Second Life, dubbed Second Nature, was established in November 2006. The islands are now covered in exhibits from scientists who have borrowed land on Second Nature to trial virtual collaboration. NPG is now focusing Second Life as a venue for events, and has been hosting a series of weekly talks since September 2007 -- see this round-up of previous Nautilus posts for some examples. Further events are planned for 2008, and will be announced on Joanna's blog on Nature Network.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 04, 2007
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Michael Kenward starts a debate in Nature Network's science writers' group called Science experiments in accessibility, in which he highlights the journal Science's trial project of starting each Research Article with a one-page author's summary. Michael sees two benefits for science writers: one, to help authors to produce accessible summaries; and another to use the summaries to write more easily and confidently about the research.
Following this post is an online discusssion about the benefits to the reader of different types of summary which you may find stimulating, and to which you are welcome to contribute, or comment here. Typical summaries provided by journals range from News and Views-style editorials (articles by independent scientists in the field about a new finding), to short author summaries, to "making the paper" (interviews with an author featured on Nature's author page in the journal every week), to "inside the paper" (editors' accounts of how the paper evolved from submission to acceptance during the peer-review process) to one-paragraph editors' summaries, to science journalism, to blog posts, to podcasts. What kind of reader finds what kind of summary most useful? Would authors welcome the additional task of writing one-page summaries?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 21, 2007
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Ai Lin Chun of Nature Nanotechnology describes how to join Nature Network and one of its many groups:
1) Complete your profile (include a picture)*
2) Participate in the forum (post topics/replies; ask questions)
3) Read the notice board
4) Post your newest publications to the group profile for increased visibility
5) Set your account to receive at least one email per week to keep up to date on latest events/postings

*For examples of a Network profile, here is Ai Lin's (click on her name), and here is mine.
There is a huge variety of groups to join, including in every discipline of science, or arts/culture, or science/society, or general science-related: here is a listing. Select groups to suit your own interests and interact with like-minded scientists and other users. It's simple to do, and all free.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 19, 2007
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The Importance of Patents to Scientists is the title of today's talk at Second Nature island in Second Life. Sue Scott, a patent attorney, will talk about patents in science, why they exist and are controversial, explain the basic things all scientists need to know about patents, and attempt to dispel some of the most common misconceptions. Please see this Nascent posting for more details: Jo Scott writes that "Voice will be used, so if you need any help setting up, come along a few minutes early."
Date: Monday 5 November
Time: 11am SLT/PDT, 7pm GMT
Location: Second Nature Island
Contact: Joanna Wombat

Posted by Maxine Clarke on November 05, 2007
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Are you interested in finding out more about research in Mainland China and Hong Kong? Take a look at Nature China. Every week, the editors of Nature China survey the scientific literature to identify the best recently published papers from mainland China and Hong Kong, and provide a summary of the results.

Divided into subject areas, this portal allows you to stay up-to-date with the latest research appearing in various scientific publications in this region. Taking materials science as an example, here some recent highlights posted on Nature China:

• Carbon nanotubes: Becoming a brighter fighter
• Drug delivery: Wet or dry
• Magnetic nanoparticles: Artificial enzymes
• Super-hard conductors: Electric diamonds

Other subject areas are: biotechnology; cell and molecular biology; chemistry; clinical medicine; developmental biology; Earth and environment; ecology and evolution; genetics; neuroscience; space and astronomy; and physics. You can register for Nature China e-alerts at the website, and stay abreast of the latest research in your field from mainland China and Hong Kong. Help us identify the best Chinese papers by using the recommended paper section of the website. Click here to recommend a paper and find out what papers other users have recommended.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 26, 2007
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The Council of Science Editors has organized journals around the globe to participate in its 2007 Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development. Hundreds of journals are publishing articles related to the scientific and medical issues that surround this theme. The Nature journals are pleased to contribute the content highlighted on this page, all of which is free. We have also created a supporting archive comprising previously published content from the Nature Publishing Group that is relevant to this theme.
See here for the nature.com Poverty and Human Development index page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 25, 2007
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For those interested in specific groups of organisms, we have arranged the large-scale biology papers published at Nature Publishing Group into a "Tree of Life" organization at the Omics Gateway, so that you can browse among the organisms. Papers that focus on a single species can be found in the most exclusive organism page that includes that species: for example papers on humans will appear on the human page rather than the primates or mammals page. Papers that focus on, or are relevant to, multiple species can be found in the set of pages that encompass those species: for example a paper that compares the dog genome with the human genome will appear on both the human and mammal pages. Categories listed on the gateway and in the picture include animals; archaea; arthropods; bacteria; chordates; eukaryotes; firmicutes; fungi; green plants; human; mammals; metagenomics (genomics of microbial communities); nematodes; primates; proteobacteria; rodents and viruses.
As well as browsing organisms, you can also browse subjects at the Omics Gateway. Why "omics"? It is a suffix that has been added to many fields to denote studies undertaken on a large or genome-wide scale. While not everyone agrees with this change of terms, it is a short and inclusive term to use to help point you to our published papers in the area. For example although we may not yet be able to precisely define the metabolome, we can all appreciate that studies in this area should yield novel insight into the processes that drive cellular metabolism and detailed interactions between them. Papers here come from publications throughout Nature Publishing Group in one or more of the subject areas of: cancer genomics; chemical genomics; comparative, evolutionary and population genomics; epigenomics; genetics of gene expression; genome sequence and analysis; glycomics; metabolomics/nomics; pharmacogenomics; proteomics; systems biology; techniques and methods; and transcriptomics.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 16, 2007
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Nature is now able to accept Word 2007 files, provided that they are authored from the beginning in "Compatibility Mode", that is, as a Word 97-2003 document and saved in .doc format. We cannot accept files in .docx format, so please do not write the paper as a Word 2007 document then save as a Word 97-2003 document. The resaons for the earlier compatibility problems with Word 2007 experienced by publishers, and the efforts made by them, their suppliers of production technologies, and Microsoft, to resolve these, are discussed in this earlier Nautilus post.
The details of how to format a submission in Word 2007 are described in Nature's Guide to Authors:
Using Word 2007 to produce a Nature paper
Open a new document.
Turn on ‘Compatibility Mode’: click the Microsoft Office button, Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.
Note that some features of Word 2007 will now be inactive, including the default equation editor. See this Microsoft page for details.
Copy and paste the Word 2003 template (available at the Nature website) into the open document, and write the paper.
NB To put in equations, use Insert/Object/Microsoft Equation 3.0.
To put in symbols such as Greek letters, use Insert/Symbol; we recommend using Symbol font.
Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on October 03, 2007
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Nature Clinical Practice (NCP), the medical publishing arm of Nature Publishing Group (NPG), has announced that NCP Cardiovascular Medicine will accept clinical and translational original research, starting this month (September 2007). The journal is consdiering submissions of original research papers in the areas of randomized, controlled trials; systematic reviews/meta-analyses; observational studies; epidemiological studies; and translational studies -- as well as timely and succinct analysis of recent advances. The journal's online submission site for original reserach papers is here; or you can email the journal for further information.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 20, 2007
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Nature Methods' September Editorial, A 'rough guide' to publication (Nature Methods 4, 675; 2007) describes the process of submitting or resubmitting a manuscript—some important steps and decisions along the way.

The path to publication is a well-beaten one for some scientists but seems more like a dark, unmarked road to others. It helps to know what to expect from peer review (see our May 2006 editorial), but a number of other procedural steps often cause disorientation as well. Here are some trail blazes and travel advice.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 19, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group and The New York Academy of Sciences announce the second Nature Chemical Biology Symposium: Chemical Neurobiology, on February 22-23, 2008 at The New York Academy of Sciences. (See here for location and accommodation details.) The 2008 symposium will explore how chemists and biologists are using the tools and philosophy of chemical biology to understand the molecular basis of neuronal function. The two-day meeting will comprise a series of four scientific sessions that look at distinct molecular functions of a neuron (chemical sensing, synapses and signalling, synthetic neurobiology and brain matters) and will conclude with a keynote session featuring Linda Buck, a pioneer in the field of neuroscience.
The meeting organisers are Terry Sheppard, Chief Editor of Nature Chemical Biology, together with his colleagues Joanne Kotz, Mirella Bucci and Catherine Goodman, as well as Stacie Bloom of the New York Academy of Sciences. See here for registration details.
See here for more about Nature Conferences.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on September 03, 2007
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The Journal of Investigative Dermatology now has a journal club group on Nature Network, a place to read, discuss, and learn more about cutting-edge research in cutaneous biology. Anyone can join Nature Network simply by registering for an account. It is all free, and once you've joined, you can join the Journal of Investigative Dermatology's or any other group from the large range that have been set up by users. You can also participate in the forum discussions or set up your own blog on the Nature Network -- the place for scientists to meet, communicate and socialise.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 20, 2007
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The articles that have been downloaded most often, in PDF format, from the Nature website in July, are listed below and can be accessed online from this page. The chart does not rank the quality, scientific significance or citation impact of the content. However, it may bring articles to your attention that you might not have otherwise noticed. We hope you enjoy them.

Continue reading "Nature's July top ten PDF downloads" »

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2007
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For advice about how to get your stem cell paper in Nature, senior editor Natalie DeWitt, will answer your questions about how the editorial process works, common misconceptions and other topics in the stem-cell field. Please send Natalie an email containing your question.

Highlights from this month's Nature Reports Stem Cells include:

California stem-cell research: assessing return on investment
Read our commentary by Stanford researcher Michael T. Longaker that explores how Californians can figure out whether its landmark, debt-funded investment in stem-cell research will pay off.
Why are recipients of California stem-cell grants using lines that are eligible for federal funding?
A Nature Reports Stem Cell survey of researchers examines the grants designed to bring new researchers into the stem-cell field.
Bureaucracy blocks work on embryonic stem cells in Japan
Kyoto University's Norio Nakatsuji argues that irrational regulations stifle research in his country.
What experiments should be legal on animal-human chimaeras?
With new legislation covering the use of animal-human chimeras in the works in the United Kingdom, Nature Reports Stem Cells summarizes the report from the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.
Embryonic stem cells for drug discovery
In Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, experts from Monash University describe the advances needed to make assays feasible.
Also read about a survey finding that most fertility patients would donate left-over embryos for stem-cell research and the latest news and views on engineered pluripotent stem cells from Nature.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on August 14, 2007
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In a post entitled Copy-Editing and Citation-Linking , Michael Jubb of the Research Information Network compares the version of an article finalised by the author, and the version edited by the journal. An extract is provided here:

"Two recent articles in Learned Publishing, the journal published by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), have highlighted the issue. The first, by Wates and Campbell, looked at the changes made in copy-editing in articles published in a series of Blackwell journals. The second, by Goodman, Dowson and Yaremchuk, is in the current issue of Learned Publishing, but also, interestingly, through the University of Arizona’s repository. I have not tried to compare the two versions. It would be interesting to do so, not least because they found that as a result of publishers’ copy-editing “there were a number of differences between author-final and published versions that were ‘confusing’ and that sometimes the publisher version and sometimes the author version was the more confusing”.......
In an editorial ....Sally Morris also comments on the two articles, and lays considerable stress on the value that the publisher adds in the checking and formatting of references and the provision of citation linking via CrossRef..... the need to add DOI links is a relatively new one which I gather relatively few authors actually do themselves (and I was not guided so to do by the publishers of either of my recent articles)."
See here for the full article.
We would be interested to hear further feedback from authors about the editing and web services they received from Nature journals and NPG journals, to add to the regular "author experience" surveys we conduct.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 19, 2007
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Dr Daniel Kalman of Emory University Atlanta, writes to tell us of his delight that the image of a cell infected with poxvirus that graced the July 2005 cover of Nature Medicine -- the work of Illustrator Katie Ris -- has been included as a finalist in the Nikon Small World Microphotography Competition. Voting is now open to the public to choose the winner, so Dr Kalman would like to encourage you to go to the competition site and vote -- ideally for his lab's picture, of course ;-).
Here is a link to the competition website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 17, 2007
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Futures is the award-winning science-fiction section of Nature, now currently running in Nature's monthly sister title, Nature Physics.
Futures is returning to Nature this week, in the 5 July 2007 issue, as a weekly back-page feature, as well as continuing each month in Nature Physics. The Futures column in each journal will forge its own identity: a story in one journal will not be reprinted in the other, although authors are free to express a preference and choose for which journal their story should be considered.
Although contributions are sometimes commissioned, unsolicited stories are welcome for both journals. Each story should be an entirely fictional, original, self-contained piece between 850-950 words in length, and the genre should, broadly speaking, be 'hard' (that is, 'scientific' SF) rather than, say, outright fantasy, slipstream or horror.
Each item should be sent as a Word (.doc) attachment to futures@nature.com, giving full contact details along with a brief (approximately 30-word) autobiographical squib that could be appended to the story if published. Unsolicited artwork is not considered. Presubmission enquiries are discouraged: instead, prospective authors are advised to read earlier Futures stories in Nature, Nature Physics and selected examples available here for free. Please do not send multiple submissions. Reprints of stories published elsewhere are not considered.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on July 04, 2007
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Last week, Nature held mini-conferences in Beijing and Shanghai to celebrate the launch of Nature China. There were over 200 attendees in Beijing, and Liu Depei, president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, gave the opening remarks, together with Daoxiang Sun of Tsinghua University Council. Also speaking were Huang Laiqiang of Tsinghua University, who last year was a coauthor of a paper in Nature on self pollination in orchids (Nature 441, 945-946; 2006), and Xiaolin Zhang, head of the Innovation Center China of AstraZeneca and sponsor of Nature China, who outlined the company's activities in the region.
A similar event was held at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences (SIBS), organized by Dangsheng Li, deputy editor in chief of Cell Research, a journal based at SIBS and part of Nature Publishing Group's Asia-Pacific academic journal programme. The meeting was attended by about 120 people, with talks by Jarui Wu, vice president of SIBS, and Hong-Wei Xue, deputy director of the Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who provided tips on publishing in international journals.
According to results presented at the conferences, in 2006, scientists from mainland China and Hong Kong published more than 80,000 scientific papers that were indexed by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), bringing the output of scientific research at the same level (in numbers) as the United Kingdom and Japan.
Additional data from ISI indicate that the number of high impact papers from China with large numbers of citations is also increasing rapidly in number year on year.
Every week, Nature China’s editors select some of the best recently published research from across the scientific and medical literature, and provide short easy-to-understand summaries of the results. The website also allows users to recommend research articles for inclusion, and to vote on those recommendations. Furthermore, the website has an archive of highlights of 154 research articles published in top scientific journals since 2000, and in the case of research articles highlighted from Nature journals, the original full text scientific articles are made freely available to registered users of Nature China.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 18, 2007
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The IPSEN Foundation, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and Nature Immunology are pleased to announce the first Emergence & Convergence mini-symposium, which will focus on small RNAs in development, immunology and cancer, on 3 October 2007 at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York.
The mini-symposium will address what we know and what we have yet to understand about the molecular intricacies of the processing and production of these small non-coding RNAs, as well as the mechanistic basis underlying their physiological functions.
Speakers at this one-day meeting work in a broad array of scientific fields but share a common interest in small RNAs. The aim is to facilitate discussion and collaboration among diverse scientific disciplines to further our understanding of the function of these enigmatic RNAs.
More information is available at the conference website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on June 07, 2007
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From Nature's Guide to Authors:
Futures is the award-winning science-fiction section of Nature and Nature Physics. Contributions are usually commissioned, but unsolicited articles are welcome. Each Future should be an entirely fictional, self-contained story between 850-950 words in length, and the genre should, broadly speaking, be 'hard' (that is, 'scientific' SF) rather than, say, outright fantasy, slipstream or horror. Each item should be sent as a Word (.doc) attachment to futures@nature.com, including full contact details and a 30-word autobiographical note to be appended to the story if published. (Please do not send presubmission enquiries, but send the whole story.) Unsolicited artwork is not considered. Before submitting, prospective authors are advised to read earlier Futures columns in Nature and Nature Physics; selected examples are available free, and the whole collection of Futures published in Nature is available here (subscription or site licence required).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 16, 2007
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Are you a scientist with some fascinating results to discuss? Have you just published in Nature and are burning to tell the world about your new work? Would you like to see what it is like to give a virtual talk? We are looking to try out some events in our amphitheatre and meeting area at Second Nature in Second Life .

If you are interested in trying out a talk, presentation or question–answer seminar in this novel format, please do get in touch with us. Some of the events that have previously taken place in Second Life include:

•Dr Eric Chaisson, Director of the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University, author of the book Hubble Wars, talking about his work and answering questions from the audience.
•What can the world's most powerful computers do now? Rez Tone, who works with IBM's Blue Gene research project, explained his membrane protein science effort, including questions and discussion.
•The Spaceflight museum held a presentation about BLAST (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope), a scientific ballooning project dedicated to understanding the origins of the Universe.
•Kevin Warwick, Professor of Cybernetics at the University of Reading, gave a talk entitled "Upgrading Humans: Why not ?”

If you would like to participate in this cutting-edge initiative, please contact Joanna Scott to suggest a topic and to find out more about this strange but exciting new format. You can contact her in the usual world directly by email or find her in Second Life, where she is known as Joanna Wombat. I would also be happy to forward any emails sent to her via the Nature journals authors' email address, or you can drop a comment to this post.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 15, 2007
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From Nature's Authors page (Nature 447, xi; 2007):
It's one thing to review a book about events in your scientific field; it's quite another to find yourself a character in the story. Per Ahlberg, a palaeontologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, says he experienced "a dislocating feeling" while reviewing Swimming in Stone: The Amazing Gogo Fossils of the Kimberley by John Long. Ahlberg found that he had a "walk-on part" in the story about the finding, excavation and analysis of a treasure trove of fish fossils in an Australian barrier reef that is now above ground. Ahlberg's feeling of displacement increased when he came across "a rather unflattering photo of me with Mike Coates in the field".
Perhaps because of his proximity to the story, Ahlberg enjoyed the review process. "The pleasure of reviewing a book like this one is that not only is the subject familiar to me, but I've been to the locality and I know many of the people who featured in it." Despite some minor quibbles about details, Ahlberg was able to give the book his seal of approval. "I didn't have to throw the thing at the wall in frustration," he smiles.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 10, 2007
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The latest edition of Nurture, the magazine for Nature journal authors, is now out, featuring articles on authors and editors from the Nature journals, our latest new journal Nature Photonics, Nature's new News and Views Q/A format, Second Nature (Second Life), highlights from Nature's history, the new online publications Nature Reports Avian Flu and Nature Network Boston, how to write a bestselling science book, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology's service for 3D protein structure visualization, and more.

Authors have a degree of curiosity about what goes on at the journal after their paper is submitted. Nurture is intended to give authors an inside look at our procedures, and to tell them about services we offer. What happens after you submit your work? Why do we issue a press release and how is it created? What happens when your paper is featured in News and Views or in the international press? How do we decide what services to introduce? What are the editors like?

We hope that Nurture will help to reveal some of the processes that happen behind the veil of the Nature journals, and will convey something of what it is like having a paper published in one of them. We also hope that Nurture is an entertaining read.

The print edition of Nurture is sent to Nature journal authors who have published a paper in the past year, so if you fall into this category, you should be receiving your copy soon if you haven't already. It is also available free of charge as a digital edition, which you can obtain by clicking on the underlined part of this sentence.

Please let us know what you think of Nurture, either in the comments here or via email. What would you like to read about in future issues? Please send us your feedback about your experiences as a published author in the Nature journals, or your suggestions for content. Letters on the topic of authorship can be submitted for publication in Nurture, by email.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on May 09, 2007
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Nature Protocols is currently offering free access to all of volume 2 for the month of May. The current issue (vol 2, no. 5) includes:

>Immobilization of enzymes on heterofunctional epoxy supports
>Generation of a defined and uniform population of CNS progenitors and neurons from mouse embryonic stem cells
>Isolation and culture of rat and mouse oligodendrocyte precursor cells
>Synthesis of oligo-RNAs with photocaged adenosine 2'-hydroxyls
>Identification and insertion of 3-carbon bridges in protein disulfide bonds: a computational approach

As well as reading current content, at the Nature Protocols site you can also upload your own protocol directly, view movies of protocols, join the discussion forums, add comments to protocols on the site, and check out the "tools and reagents" page, in which details are provided of how to make up some commonly used reagents, as well as an updated list of all the basic equipment that researchers will need to perform the protocols published.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 30, 2007
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Henry Gee, in his review of the book The Discovery of the Hobbit by M. Morwood and P. Van Oosterzee (Nature 446, 979-980;26 April 2007), describes what it was like to read what seemed to be the equivalent of a description of the discovery of a unicorn:

"Many manuscripts received by Nature are full of the confidence of scientists who know precisely what they have found and why it is important. But a paper that landed unannounced on my desk on 3 March 2004 was surprising, not only for the extraordinary discovery that it reported, but for the matter-of-fact, almost muted, tones in which it was described. Reading between the lines, it seemed as if the discoverers of Sundanthropus floresianus weren't entirely clear in their own minds about what manner of unicorn they had unearthed."

He goes on to recount: "The referees responded with one accord. To be sure, the creature was strange, but the strangeness might be a consequence of its size. The skull, though, was clearly that of a member of our own genus, Homo. In addition, one referee commented specifically on the specific name, floresianus, noting that generations of students would dub it 'flowery anus'. The authors duly changed the generic and specific name to Homo floresiensis and, after several iterations, that was the name attached to the fossil when the discovery was published in Nature on 28 October 2004."
See the complete book review here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 27, 2007
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While on the subject of neuroscience, this week's (26 April) free podcast from Nature, "A new study of old brains", features an analysis of two damaged brains, preserved in a museum since the nineteenth century, which could force neuroscientists to rethink the area where language resides in the brain. Two brains in which Paul Broca, the French anatomist and surgeon, originally identified 'Broca's area' -- the brain's speech-processing centre -- have been scanned using magnetic resonance imaging. Oddly, the new scans show that Broca's original patients didn't have damage in Broca's area after all. Read the full story at news@nature.com.
Also discussed in this week's podcast are new studies reported in Nature on lowering inhibitions in addiction; wing shape in swifts; iron and carbon sequestration; the perfect pint; and how invasive species gain ground.
An archive of Nature podcasts and their transcripts, all freely available, is on this web page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 26, 2007
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If you want to order reprints of your article, or extra copies of the issue of the journal in which you pubished it, or even a poster of the cover of the journal issue, there is now a central ordering page on the Reprints and Permissions website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 23, 2007
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Nature Chemical Biology is offering readers a free 3D poster and glasses. Just go to this link to make your claim, or go here to find out more about the poster and glasses, which enable you to view and manipulate chemical compounds in 3D on the journal website. Nature Chemical Biology's May table of contents is available here. The journal has an online animated guide to navigating its site, and now features online linking of chemical structures to PubChem.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 20, 2007
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For most journals, adequate space for methods is taken for granted. Nature now presents a new format to its papers that removes a longstanding shortcoming in this respect. From now on, all Nature papers requiring methods sections will be able to include all the necessary detail.
The full methods are published online only. The printed version contains a summary of up to 300 words, with a reference to the full online version. A key point is that the new online methods sections are not only sufficient for researchers wishing to replicate the work (a longstanding complaint about past Nature papers) but are also integral to the HTML (full text) and online PDF versions of the paper. (For completeness, both online versions also contain the methods summary in the print version.)
One of this week’s (5 April issue) Articles, an exciting paper on targeted fast optical interrogation of neural circuitry, represents the inauguration of this format. If you are thinking of submitting your own work to Nature, you might like to take a look at how these "methods" are displayed in the three versions of the Article: full-text online, PDF online and PDF print. Here is the full-text (HTML) version, in which the full methods run on after the end of the main paper (the paper's references are all together in one list and indexed). Here is the online PDF version, in which the full methods appear at the end of the main paper with their associated references. And if you look at the printed issue: 5 April vol 446, pages 633-669 (2007), you can see that the “full methods” are not there (but readers are directed to the online version).
We are delighted to be able to offer this service to authors. We hope you will be pleased, too.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on April 05, 2007
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From the current (April 2007) issue, Nature Chemical Biology is introducing functionality that allows readers to view and manipulate chemical compounds in three dimensions on the journal web site. As well as being an author service we are delighted to introduce, this functionality will allow readers to view chemical compounds in 3D using a jmol window within the ‘compound data index page’ for a paper. Selected articles are free to view online, allowing you to explore this new functionality including: "Discovery of a natural thiamine adenine nucleotide" (Nature Chemical Biology 3, 211-212; 2007); and "Structure-guided development of affinity probes for tyrosine kinases using chemical genetics" (Nature Chemical Biology 3, 229-238; 2007).
The Nature Chemical Biology editorial team welcomes contributions from academic, industrial and government sectors across all areas of chemical biology. To submit your next paper to Nature Chemical Biology, visit the journal's electronic submission website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 21, 2007
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How do you go about publishing your research in a Nature journal? What happens after you submit your paper? What is the editorial process? We have recently updated our advice to authors, which is available in newly translated French, German, Italian and Spanish versions. As ever, we welcome questions and comments about the editorial process and about getting published in our journals. Read all about it in:
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
You can also visit our Asia-Pacific gateway for versions in Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 14, 2007
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Nature Cell Biology has this month been counting the average number of words in its own papers and in those in other comparable journals:

"Nature Cell Biology articles contain an average 9,006 words (7,903 in the main paper), with 11.5 figures (6.4 in the main paper) composed of 46.9 individual panels (26.8 in main paper). Compare this to The Journal of Cell Biology — 9,472 words average text length (9,248 in main paper), 10.1 figures (8.4 in the paper) with 31 panels (24.9 in the paper); or Cell — 11,042 words (10,188 in paper), 11.7 figures (6.7 in paper) with 48.3 panels (33.5 in paper). Importantly, Cell papers contain approximately the same amount of data as Nature Cell Biology articles, and The Journal of Cell Biology papers contain somewhat less. Cell papers contain 229 words per display panel, whereas Nature Cell Biology articles contain 192 and The Journal of Cell Biology papers are 5% longer than Nature Cell Biology articles. Of course, Nature Cell Biology letters are shorter (5,961 words and 8.0 figures, of which 4.7 are in the main paper, and 33.5 panels with 25 in the main paper), but articles represent approximately 30% of our papers, and we will not cut down a paper to letter format if this damages the contents."
(The data are based on ten randomly sampled recent papers from each journal. Text counts exclude figure legends.)
See here for full text of this Editorial.
Nature's new long methods sections were discussed on this blog last week.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on March 05, 2007
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Nature Network is now live. Please log on and experiment, spread the word to your own scientific network, and contact us with any questions or suggestions. You can use the site to create personal profile pages to describe yourself and your research. You can form topic-based groups, contribute to forums, view and announce seminars and conferences, read news and browse local job listings.

We hope that the network will help scientists everywhere to identify like-minded researchers, hold online discussions, showcase their work via personal homepages, share information with groups (open or private), comment on content and tag it. Participation is free to all, requiring little more than www.nature.com registration. Like all Web 2.0 products, launch is the beginning, not the end, of the road, so user-driven upgrades will be added regularly from now on.

Nature Network will, we hope, stimulate and facilitate scientific communication and collaboration in innovative, flexible and forward-thinking ways. It should be especially appealing to postdocs and junior faculty.

Nature Network also features local hubs, offering all the global tools plus area news, features, blogs, jobs and events. The first local site is Nature Network Boston, which has been in beta version over the past eight months, and now containing new features. Nature Network Boston supports, celebrates and connects scientists in the city, with rich daily editorial coverage of Boston-area research and researchers, Boston bloggers, a calendar of Boston-area lectures, seminars and conferences and listings of Boston-area jobs for scientists. Coming in March: Nature Network London.

An early indicator of the potential of the Nature networks is shown by Michael Durney, a postdoc at Harvard Medical School, who has grown his Biomolecular NMR Spectroscopy group on Nature Network Boston from less than 10 members to 40. Groups like Durney’s will continue to grow, and will become more international, at which point online data-sharing tools that NPG will provide, would start to become useful. The value of the networks lies in information about local organizations, research and events, ensuring relevancy for the user as well as allowing scientists attending conferences or visiting those areas for other reasons, to find local events and connect with like-minded researchers. We hope you'll use the network, and give us your opinion of it.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 26, 2007
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Announcing Nature Geoscience – first issue January 2008. Nature Geoscience will be a monthly, multidisciplinary journal aimed at bringing together the most significant research across the entire spectrum of the Earth Sciences.

Published in print and online, the journal's content will reflect the core subject disciplines of the Earth Sciences and related subject areas, extending from atmospheric science, climate science, geochemistry, geology, oceanography, planetary science, seismology and tectonics to space physics and volcanology. Edited by Heike Langenberg, PhD, the journal will contain primary research, review articles, news and views, reports highlighting important papers published in other journals, commentary and analysis.

More about Nature Geoscience , including the aims and scope, e-alerts, information on call for papers (coming in the Spring) and news of further editorial appointments.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 22, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group is offering free online access to the entire March issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology. The journal has the highest impact factor, 13.989, of any monthly microbiology review journal, so do check it out. Reviews in the March issue include: "The antibiotic resistome: the nexus of chemical and genetic diversity" by Gerard D. Wright; "The road to chromatin - nuclear entry of retroviruses" by Youichi Suzuki and Robert Craigie; "Virus trafficking - learning from single-virus tracking" by Boerries Brandenburg and Xiaowei Zhuang; "Microfabrication meets microbiology" by Douglas B. Weibel, Willow R. DiLuzio and George M. Whitesides; and "Cannibalism and fratricide: mechanisms and raisons d'etre" by Jean-Pierre Claverys and Leiv S. Havarstein.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 19, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group and the Society for Mucosal Immunology (SMI) are embarking on a new publishing partnership this autumn, with the launch of a new publication, Mucosal Immunology.

The Editor-in Chief of Mucosal Immunology will be Dr Brian Kelsall of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The journal will aim to provide a forum for both basic and clinical scientists to discuss all aspects of immunity and inflammation that involve mucosal tissues. "Mucosal Immunology will be the first journal dedicated to this field of science. I am greatly looking forward to collaborating with NPG on this important project," said DrKelsall.

Mucosal immunology research has the aim of understanding diseases such as AIDS, asthma and inflammatory bowel disease. The journal will be devoted to publishing high-quality original research, reviews, commentaries, editorials and letters that reflect the interests of scientists studying gastrointestinal, pulmonary, nasopharyngeal, oral, ocular and genitourinary immunology. In addition, Mucosal Immunology aims to provide a primary method of communication for the SMI governing board and its members through the publication of society news, announcements of planned meetings and conferences, discussions of policy concerns and advertisements for job and training opportunities.

Journal website, including call for papers.
Society for Mucosal Immunology website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 14, 2007
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Nature Publishing Group hosts several blogs, all of which can be directly reached from the left-hand sidebar here. These blogs all have their different goals, identities and readerships, but one of them, Methagora, is the most different -- so far. The journal Nature Methods has created an online space inviting readers' contributions, in particular comments on published papers. The site's name comes from the ancient Greek agora, and the journal plans for the site to become a public place where 'citizen readers' assemble and discuss important (methodological) matters. But is there much debate, in fact? From this month's Nature Methods Editorial, "Happy to take questions":

"But the uptake is slow. Of course, these are still early days, and many people may not even be aware of this forum—hence this editorial and upcoming promotion. Other similar initiatives, however, such as those ongoing at Cell and Nature Biotechnology, experience an equally scarce response. Particularly worrisome is the fact that the Nature Biotechnology initiative and one of the Methagora postings are seeking community feedback on papers that outline proposed reporting standards. Despite the potential impact that such standards, if adopted, would have on individual researchers, only a handful of the interested have taken the time to comment. This lackluster reaction makes us pause and speculate about scientists' motivations for the commenting activity."

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 13, 2007
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The lastest in Nature Publishing Group's Milestones programme is Milestones in Cutaneous Biology, an online resource that brings together key discoveries that have shaped the field of cutaneous biology over the past 100 years. Published in quarterly installments, each milestone will highlight a classic finding. More than 30 international leaders in epidermal and dermal structural proteins, cell differentiation, vascular and tumour biology, autoimmunity, photobiology, and genetic disease were enlisted to edit the series, which will provide a powerful instructive tool for students and investigators, as well as an information resource for anyone interested in the topic. A subject area index page is provided, featuring an interactive graphic diagram of the skin.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 08, 2007
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The British Journal of Pharmacology has just published a free guide to receptors and channels by S. P. H. Alexander, A. Mathie and J.A. Peters. From the introduction: "The great proliferation of drug targets in recent years has driven the need to organise and condense the information in a logical way. This is the underlying reason for this Guide to Receptors and Channels, distributed with the British Journal of Pharmacology. Our intent is to produce an authoritative but user-friendly publication, which allows a rapid overview of the key properties of a wide range of established or potential pharmacological targets. The aim is to provide information succinctly so that a newcomer to a particular target group can identify the main elements "at a glance"."

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Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 06, 2007
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The Research Library of the Signaling Gateway brings together all recent cell-signalling-related research published in the Nature Publishing Group journals. Divided up into subject categories or by date, you can be guaranteed to find what you are looking for. Here is a selection of the latest research published this week:
Transcription factor control of asymmetric cell divisions that establish the stomatal lineage.
Nature 445, 537-540 (1 February 2007).
Notch signal organizes the Drosophila olfactory circuitry by diversifying the sensory neuronal lineages.
Nature Neuroscience 10, 153-160 (2007).
The energy sensing LKB1-AMPK pathway regulates p27kip1 phosphorylation mediating the decision to enter autophagy or apoptosis.
Nature Cell Biology 9, 218 - 224 (2007).
The research library is one of the many ways in which Nature Publishing Group extends the reach of articles published in its journals. Discipline-specific areas on the nature.com site, varoius web focuses on the journals' websites, and many other collaborations between journals collect articles together in different combinations, which draws them to the attention not just to readers of the journal in which they were published, but to researchers using nature.com to find out what's hot in their field more generally.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 02, 2007
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Tickets are now on sale for the Royal Institution evening public lecture series on polymathy and science, chaired by Oliver Morton, Chief News and Features Editor of Nature. The programme is run by Sara Abdulla, Editor of Nature Networks and publisher of Macmillan Science books. All are welcome.
Two lectures on great polymaths in March and April will be followed by a debate in May about whether interdisciplinarity is alive, dead, possible, desirable, vice or virtue.

March 21: Andrew Robinson on Thomas Young: ‘The last man who knew everything’
April 18: John Whitfield on D’ Arcy Wentworth Thompson: ‘The last man who read everything’
May 16: Panel debate: What happened to the polymaths

Venue: The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35–43 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PE, UK.
Tickets: www.rigb.org ; (+44) 0 20 7409 2992
Details: 7-8.30 p.m. Price £8 (£5 for Ri Members, RCS Fellows/Members and concessions). You can book for all three of the Polymaths Series events at the special price of £20 (£12 Ri Members, RCS Fellows/Members and concessions).

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 02, 2007
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The Nature Podcast is a free weekly audio show that you can play through your computer. Every show features highlighted content from the week's edition of Nature, including interviews with the authors, and in-depth commentary and analysis from journalists covering science around the world. This week, hear about conserving the Amazon with a scientific SWAT team, redrawing the hydrological cycle from space, micro-organisms forming new relationships, and virtual quantum computing on chips. To subscribe to the Nature Podcast, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader, iTunes or your preferred media player:

http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/rss/nature.xml

An archive of Nature podcasts is available on the Nature Newsblog.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on February 01, 2007
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The Question & Answer (Q&A) is a new format in Nature's popular News & Views section, the first outing being "Chromosome territories" by Karen J. Meaburn and Tom Misteli, published in the current (25 January 2007) issue (subscription or site licence required). Tim Lincoln, Nature's News and Views editor, provides some of his own questions and answers about this venture:

What is it? Q&As come in different guises in different publications, including Nature’s own News and News features sections. For News & Views, the Q&A approach involves a collaboration between an expert author and an editor in formulating questions and answers to illuminate some aspect of ‘happening’ science. It does not constitute an interview as such, and the expert author (or authors; two maximum) is the named source of the piece. Like everything in News & Views, Q&A pieces deal with science itself, not matters of policy, funding and so on.

Do these items require a news peg in the form of a new paper? No, which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Q&A approach from the conventional type of News & Views article. The latter format will remain the mainstay of News & Views, but it restricts the topics we can cover, and the breadth in which we do so.

Isn’t the object of Q&A the same as that of the long News & Views features that appear from time to time? Yes it is, but there are various reasons for trying a different approach. One is that, unlike News & Views features, the appearance of Q&A items is very different to that of Reviews/Progress articles, emphasizing the intent to appeal to non-specialists. Another is that the Q&A format looks less intimidating not only in print but -- crucially -- also on the web, and will be more browsable in both media.

Will potential authors see the Q&A approach as trivializing their subject? Not if we can persuade them that this is a way to reach a very large audience -- one well beyond that which would tackle an article in more usual form. Although we want these pieces to be readable and lively, they won’t be frivolous. At about 2,000 words they’ll actually be pretty substantial. They just won’t look it.

What does one of these Q&A pieces look like? See for yourself via the article in the current issue on chromosome territories. It’s the fruit of collaboration between Karen Meaburn and Tom Misteli as the expert authors, and Helen Dell as the editor. More generally the rules are that these pieces should take around 2 or (maximum) 3 pages, with 2 or 3 display items (illustrations or tables). On the practical front, the Qs and As both need to vary in length to provide changes of pace (but with an absolute maximum of 110 characters for the Qs and of 180 words for the As). There’s no reference list as such; instead a maximum of six review articles/book chapters/websites are cited at the end.

How often will they appear? We’ll test the water by publishing a few in 2007. What follows will depend on how they are received by readers.

What kind of topics will be covered? Areas of science that are lively or that are seeing progress (not necessarily the same thing), or that are ripe for expansion. Put another way, Q&A pieces can answer the question of “What’s all this about?” in the mind of the general reader -- “this” being a topic that is coming to prominence or enjoying a revival. They will offer the opportunity to visit comparatively specialist areas. Whatever the topic, they should offer a balanced view, which is not to say they will be bland, or that authors won’t be encouraged to provide their own views about disputes and sticking-points as long as they are flagged as such.

Cell biology: Chromosome territories by Karen J. Meaburn and Tom Misteli. Nature 445, 379-781 (25 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/445379a; Published online 24 January 2007.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 30, 2007
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Scopus, Elsevier’s abstract and citation database, has now added citation data, including abstracts, for many older papers, making it ever-closer to the rival Thomson’s Web of Science service. Nature Publishing Group titles are indexed by both databases, as well as by many other abstract&indexing services.

Since its launch two years ago, Scopus is now attracting publishers who want their older journals to be listed, including Springer, Nature Publishing Group, the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics. Most of these publishers have digitized their content themselves back to the first issues of their journals. Older journals, such as Nature (first issue published on 4 November 1869, and freely available online), are still in the process of digitizing their very old content. Nature's digital archive currently goes back to 1950, with the issues back to 1869 to be added later this year. Nature New Biology and Nature Physical Sciences archives are also being digitized.

Scopus already contains 15 million pre-1996 records, and the new deal will add around seven million more. The new records will include full abstracts, traditionally a strength of Thomson’s Web of Science. Scopus does not necessarily intend to index older content in all areas, believing that 11 years of citation data is enough for some purposes - for example, to provide an overview of a publication for a grant or tenure application, so is prioritzing the digitization of older content accordingly.

In some cases, researchers may be interested in older content to see the citations that their own research has received over the years, or may use it to study historical trends. Whatever the needs of the reader, the addition of more search features and functions as the two organizations compete for customers can only be of benefit, especially taking into account features being introduced by the free-to-use service Google Scholar, also driving innovation and introduction of more reader services by the commercial providers.
See Nature Publishing Group abstracting and indexing page.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 26, 2007
Categories: Author services, Citation analysis, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are times in the development of science when a shift in approach is sufficiently extensive that only a collection of thoughts and perspectives from many different practitioners can do justice to it. This issue of Nature sees the launch of a themed series of essays, called Connections, which take such an approach to the interdisciplinary study of complex, dynamic systems

The series begins just a few weeks after the popular Essay page returned to Nature. It will reiterate the tradition of this format as a forum for scientists to reflect on new ideas, or re-evaluate old ones. The Connections essays is being collated into a Nature web focus, where access to the first four will be free. We hope that, week by week, a greater story develops than could be told by a single article — and that over the coming year, the Essay page will continue to provide scientists with a valuable opportunity to say exactly what they think.

In the first Connections essay, "Biology's next revolution", Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese argue that the emerging picture of microbes as gene-swapping collectives demands a revision of such concepts as organism, species and evolution itself.

The Nature editorial introducing the Connections series is at this link.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 25, 2007
Categories: Author services, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

The EMBO Journal is running a competition to find cover images for the journal in 2007. The closing date is 31 January. There will be two winners for the prize of a year's print and online subscription, one for "the prettiest and most thought-provoking contribution depicting a piece of molecular biology research"; and one for "the most beautiful or interesting image that was made outside of the lab". An array of each type of picture, and further explanation (including an entry form), can be found at this PDF at the journal's website.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 19, 2007
Categories: Author services, Awards | Permalink | Comments (0)

In commenting on the post "Web visibility", José J. Lunazzi writes: "The title of the article mentioning "speaking" english concerns in fact to a smaller but not small problem, that of "writing" english. It is good to read that people whose native language is english need to be conscious and willing in some way to reduce the problem for the whole science. A good and simple way is to learn esperanto and start communicating with the world through it. Seeing the broad spectrum the "delta" strictly selective function of english can be understood. I had beeing at Korea, China and Japan using esperanto and english, same as in USA, and am sure that esperanto performs much better in every field of activity, coloquial, domestic or in physics."

I replied along these lines: the Esperanto solution is sensible "on paper" but realistically it is unlikely to occur, given the length of time since Esperanto was devised as a universal language.

International science journals can provide help in various ways for authors whose first language is not English. The Nature journals provide advice before the author submits -- see our webpage on the author and referee site for this purpose. This page provides a link to similar useful advice at SciDev.Net.

We'd be happy to link to other examples of writing advice for scientists in our "writing a paper" guidelines -- whether research papers, review articles or other types of scientific or technical article. Please let us know if you are aware of good guidelines, and we'll link to it to help future authors maximize clarity in preparing their manuscripts.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 18, 2007
Categories: Author Services Feedback, Author services, Writing | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Nature Clinical Practice journals are now publishing their “Practice Point” articles in NPG’s advance online publication (AOP) programme. Practice Points put original research articles into context and offer expert opinion on best practice for clinical researchers and clinicians. They are available in each of the eight journals in the Nature Clinical Practice series. With the addition of this AOP feature, the definitive versions of these articles will now be available online before the print issues of the journals appear.

More information about the Nature Clinical Practice journals is available here. You may have heard about a current article in NCP Gastroenterology and Hepatology on the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. It seems that rather than being poisoned, as is often suggested in history books, the emperor was suffering from gastric cancer. The article is currently free access, so read the fascinating, if gory, details at the link.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 17, 2007
Categories: Author services, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Network London, a free new website for science and scientists in London, will be launching in March 2007. We hope to make the Nature Network London scientific event listings, which will be regularly updated after Network London is launched, comprehensive. We are currently collecting a database of all scientific lecture and seminar listings, especially those at academic institutions, both in London and at those within a day's return journey to or from the city.

Please can you let us know about any lecture and seminar series you attend, and/or of which you are aware? You can contact us via email if you wish to include an attachment with calendars and topic lists, or drop a URL, together with any other relevant diary and contact information, in the comments to this post. You can also enquire further about Network London using this email address.

Many thanks for your help.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 16, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nobel Intent: How do we get scientists to do outreach?

John Timmer at Nobel Intent (link above) promotes the idea of "outreach faculty": people in an academic institution who could, proposes Dr Timmer, work in the institution's public affairs office to improve the quality of press releases and other often-muddled output; who would visit schools and other local community organizations; help to train graduate students so that they themselves will be better able to interact with the public, and so on.

The end result, writes Dr Timmer, would "provide benefits for the two most important constituencies—the institutions, which receive better outreach, and the departments that provide the faculty, which receive better-trained graduate students. Provided [ he adds, cynically but probably with reason ] that the academic community does not attach stigma to these positions, it can provide a rewarding experience for those inclined to become outreach faculty."

There is a discussion of these proposals in the comments section at Nobel Intent. We also welcome your views in the comments here. How can journals such as those published by Nature Publishing Group help in this process?

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 14, 2007
Categories: Author services, Communication | Permalink | Comments (1)

Music of the Spheres: Converting Scientific Units

Bruce Irving, writing on his blog Music of the Spheres (link above) notes: "Orbiter is completely metric, so when I was writing yesterday's post about force vector visualization, I wanted to mention the conversion from meganewtons (MN) to pounds-force (lbf) for those more familiar with "English units" (i.e., pounds of thrust for rocket engines). There are probably a billion web sites with information on converting units, but I especially like AllConversions.com, because it has a simple format and includes a huge number of units in its drop-down lists."

Let us know your favourite, unit-conversion websites.

Allconversions.com can be accessed directly here.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 14, 2007
Categories: Author services, Writing | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group has this week launched a website dedicated to authors and peer-reviwers. Authors & Referees @ npg (http://www.nature.com/authors) provides links to and information about the Nature journals' publication policies for primary research papers; author and referee services; and author benefits. We also provide feedback links so potential authors, peer-reviewers, scientists and other readers can ask questions about these topics. This blog (Nautilus) and our peer-reviwers' blog (Peer to Peer) are integrated into the site.

Find out more about the site here or via the links in the vertical column to the left of this page. We hope to be hearing from you about what you'd like us to include in this site, and receiving your questions and comments about our policies, services and benefits for authors and reviwers.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 12, 2007
Categories: Author services | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nature Publishing Group has just launched a monthly journal called Nature Photonics , dedicated to publishing the most significant photonics research from academia and industry.

This first issue can be seen at the link in the previous sentence, and reflects the journal's broad scope by including research papers on topics as diverse as lasers, microphotonic circuitry, near-field imaging and slow light. The inaugural issue also contains a Technology Focus on LEDs , the first of a series of regular supplements on important photonics technologies that are enabling new applications or transforming existing ones. The aims and scope of the journal are available here; information for authors is at this link; and to submit your work to this new journal, please visit this link.

Nature Photonics is NPG's first monthly research journal to have its core editorial base in the Asia-Pacific region, reflecting the strength of the Asia-Pacific region, and Japan in particular, in photonics research.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on January 03, 2007
Categories: Author services, Publications | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over a hundred leading members of the Australasian scientific community attended a party to celebrate the inaugural Nature awards for scientific mentoring in Australia at the ScienceWorks Museum in Melbourne on Friday 1 December.

Tom Healy, a colloidal chemist at The University of Melbourne, won the lifetime achievement award, and Rachel Webster, an astrophysicist at the same institution, was the mid-career awardee. The response of the audience, as well as the very strong field of over 70 excellent nominated candidates, demonstrates the recognition the awards have quickly gained in Australia. See here for Nature's press release announcing these awards.

Information and news about the Nature mentoring awards can be seen at the journal's website, at http://www.nature.com/nature/nestaawards.

Posted by Maxine Clarke on December 11, 2006
Categories: Author services, Awards | Permalink | Comments (0)