Choosing the editor for your submission

Posted on 19 Sep 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q Dear Maxine,

When we want to submit our article online, can we choose the editor ourselves? Our paper is in the field of biomedical sciences.

A Dear Professor

Thank you for your kind message. No, it is not possible for you to choose your editor yourself when you submit a manuscript, but there is a space on the submission form for you to ask for a particular editor to see your manuscript when the journal receives it. Hence, even if the manuscript is not assigned to the editor you request, that editor will be alerted to it and will be able to read and comment on it.

Styling in reference lists

Posted on 07 Aug 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q: What is the endnote alternative the editing office at Nature uses? I heard about it on a blog but I can’t seem to remember its name.

A: Nature does not use Endnote, which is a commercially available Word macro for styling reference lists for a range of journals and publishers. Nature and its typesetter use eXtyles (produced by a company called Inera) and their own technical system for reference styling which is not compatible with Endnote’s. If an author wants to use Endnote for reference styling when preparing a manuscript, we ask him or her to strip out the Endnote macros after the references are styled and before submitting the manuscript. Instructions are on the Nature submission template.

Is citation extortion practiced?

Posted on 09 Jul 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Is Citation Extortion practised? asks Peter Murray-Rust, a professor of chemistry at Cambridge University. He writes of a researcher he met who said she had submitted a manuscript and been told by the publisher (or editor) that it would not be published unless she included at least two citations to papers published by that publisher. Professor Murray-Rust is understandably appalled by this report, and asks readers of his blog whether this is a routine experience for them when submitting papers. Certainly this practice does not occur at any journals published by Nature Publishing Group: the citation list is entirely up to the author, although peer-reviewers (who are independent of the journals and of each other) might make suggestions as part of the revision process.

Precedings forum on Nature Network

Posted on 26 Jun 2007 by Maxine Clarke

There is a forum for Nature Precedings on Nature Network, where you can ask questions, receive answers and join the debate about this new way to post your results. (It is all free, but you need to sign up to Nature Network first.) One such question asked of Nature Precedings by a science blogger is: Why post on Precedings when one can just post on one’s blog? Hilary Spencer, product development manager for Nature Precedings, provides a reply at the Nature Network forum:

To me, there seem to be very good reasons to post on Precedings, the first of which involves stability. Blogs, and personal webpages, can be ephemeral. If the author changes affiliations, domain names, or even blog publishing software, blog postings may disappear. One of the goals of Precedings is to create a stable permanent archive for researchers. We anticipate that the content will be mirrored by one or more of our partner organizations, thus ensuring that the researcher’s work will always be available.

The second related reason involves ”citability”. Blogs citations currently fall in a gray area—there is no definitive way to cite a blog posting, although this is changing. One of the benefits of Precedings is that every document posted is citable, thus ensuring that the author can be properly credited with the idea. We assign a DOI or a handle to every submission, which provides a permanent identifier for the document and can be used in citations.

A final reason is exposure. For many researchers, posting to a central archive provides more exposure for their ideas than they would receive by posting it on their website. For example, I think authors tend to get more exposure when their documents are also listed in PubMed rather than only on their personal website. (Precedings allows researchers to link submissions to postings on their blogs for redundancy.) To that end, we hope Precedings will help researchers reach a wider audience for their ideas.

Nature has always been very supportive of the blogging community, but we feel that Precedings fills a gap between (informal) blogs and (formal) peer-reviewed publications. What are your thoughts?

Can you post on both Precedings and your blog? Go to the forum to give us your views and see our responses to questions like this, or add your comments here. Other topics being disussed at the Precedings Network forum are whether PowerPoint presentations are acceptable for Nature Precedings, the site’s rating system, and what drives people to post preprints in a public website.

A doctoral thesis is not “prepublication”

Posted on 17 Apr 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q: Message: Dear Editor(s),

Regarding the “duplicate publication” policy: Does a doctoral thesis count as “previously published”? i.e., can I submit work that was part of my doctoral thesis?

thanks,

A: Dear MR

No, a doctoral thesis does not count as “previously published” and yes, you can submit work that was part of your thesis, with an appropriate citation.

Best wishes

Maxine

Copyright assignment for work presented at conferences

Posted on 27 Feb 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q. Dear Editorial Office,

I would like to get your advice on the following: my project was accepted for presentation at a scientific meeting. Part of the requirements for attending this meeting and presenting there is to submit a 4-page paper. Since in a few weeks I will submit my data to your journal, I do not want to jeopardize my chances of publishing in a Nature journal. Enclosed is the Copyright Transfer that the the meeting organizers have requested me to sign. I would appreciate if you can check it out and let me know if there is any potential conflict which may prohibit my project from any future publication in your journal. The data I will present is only part of the entire data I plan of submitting to your journal.

A. We have looked at the document you sent. To speak at the meeting you do not need to sign it: the document only relates to publication of the paper that the conference organisers may wish to publish themselves after the meeting. You can present the data at the conference, but not publish them in the form of a paper, if you wish to submit them to a Nature journal afterwards. This particular agreement requires that the conference organization be acknowledged as having published the work first, in any subsequent publication. This is not appropriate for publication of the data in a Nature journal.

As a general point, Nature journals encourage scientists to present their research at meetings, and it is perfectly acceptable for them to publish the abstract(s) of their talk(s) in conference proceedings, and subsequently submit a paper containing this work to a Nature journal. Details of our policy are available on the Author and Referees’ website.

For how long should data be archived?

Posted on 08 Feb 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q. Dear Nature editors

I am a graduate student pursuing masters in biotechnology at a university. I am taking “Ethics and Professionalism Course” which is dealing with ethics, record keeping, laboratory notebook and paper publishing. I have been assigned a course work to inquire from one of the NATURE editors “What would be the reasonable time limit for keeping the data of a published paper ?”.

Could you please spare some time to reply me and give me your opinion of what would be a reasonable time limit for keeping the data (record keeping) of a published paper in your journal.

I really appreciate your help in doing my course work.

A. Dear graduate student

Permanently.

Yours sincerely

Nature

Citing submitted but not published papers

Posted on 25 Jan 2007 by Maxine Clarke

Q. Dear Editor,

We want to submit a letter to Nature. Is it allowed to cite papers that are submitted but not yet accepted?

Best regards,

Prof. Author

A. Dear Prof. Author

Thank you for your enquiry. Yes, it is allowed to cite such papers. If the paper is submitted to a journal and likely to be in the press or published by the time your paper is published (say within a couple of months of your submission), then include the paper in the reference list, with a number. If the work you are citing is less advanced, you should cite it in the text of your paper, in brackets, in the style of (manuscript in preparation) or (personal communication) or similar. These informal refereneces do not go into the reference list of the paper and do not have numbers.

For futher details, please see the guide to authors.

Yours sincerely

NATURE

www.nature.com/authors

Community preprint servers

Posted on 18 Dec 2006 by Maxine Clarke

Q. Dear Editor

My collaborators and I just submitted a paper to Nature. We would like to know whether we can send the present paper on the physics arxiv web site (see for example xxx.lanl.gov) or if ~~– to respect Nature policy~~– we should wait for the editorial decision.

A. Dear Author

Thank you for your message. It would be fine for you to send your preprint to the arxiv site, or any other recognised community preprint server. Please provide the arxiv reference number to the editor handling your paper for his/her information, though.

Our policy is here:

“Contributions submitted to, in press with or published in Nature must not be posted on any web site, except for preprints posted on recognized preprint servers (such as ArXiv) where this is community practice. The server concerned must be identified to the editor in the cover letter accompanying submission of the paper, and the content of the paper must not be advertised to the media by virtue of being on the preprint server, as explained fully in Nature.”