Nature (journal) Totally Explained

Everything about Nature Journal totally explained

Nature is a prominent scientific journal, first published on November 4, 1869. Although most scientific journals are now highly specialized, Nature is one of the few journals, along with other weekly journals such as Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that still publishes original research articles across a wide range of scientific fields. In many fields of scientific research, important new advances and original research are published as articles or letters in Nature.
Research scientists are the primary audience for the journal, but summaries and accompanying articles make many of the most important papers understandable for the general public and to scientists in other fields. Toward the front of each issue are editorials, news and feature articles on issues of general interest to scientists, including current affairs, science funding, business, scientific ethics and research breakthroughs. There are also sections on books and arts. The remainder of the journal consists mostly of research articles, which are often dense and highly technical. Due to strict limits on the length of articles, in many cases the printed text is actually a summary of the work in question with many details relegated to accompanying supplementary material on the journal's website.

History

Scientific magazines and journals preceding Nature

Nineteenth-century Britain was home to a great deal of scientific progress; particularly in the latter half of the 19th century, Britain underwent enormous technological and industrial changes and advances. The most respected scientific journals of this time were the refereed journals of the Royal Society, which had published many of the great works from Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday through to early works from Charles Darwin. In addition, during this period, the number of popular science periodicals doubled from the 1850s to the 1860s. According to the editors of these popular science magazines, the publications were designed to serve as “organs of science,” in essence, a means of connecting the public to the scientific world. The journal’s name changed from its original title to Intellectual Observer: A Review of Natural History, Microscopic Research, and Recreative Science and then later to the Student and Intellectual Observer of Science, Literature, and Art. While Recreative Science had attempted to include more physical sciences such as astronomy and archaeology, the Intellectual Observer broadened itself further to include literature and art as well., which covered different fields of science by creating subsections titled ‘Scientific Summary’ or ‘Quarterly Retrospect,’ with book reviews and commentary on the latest scientific works and publications. First owned and published by Alexander MacMillan, Nature was similar to its predecessors in its attempt to “provide cultivated readers with an accessible forum for reading about advances in scientific knowledge.” Perhaps it was in part its scientific liberality that made Nature a longer-lasting success than its predecessors. John Maddox, editor of Nature from 1966 to 1973 as well as from 1980 to 1995, suggested at a celebratory dinner for the journal’s centennial edition that perhaps it was the journalistic qualities of Nature that drew readers in; “journalism” Maddox states, “is a way of creating a sense of community among people who would otherwise be isolated from each other. This is what Lockyer’s journal did from the start.” In addition, Maddox mentions that the financial backing of the journal in its first years by the Macmillan family also allowed the journal to flourish and develop more freely than scientific journals before it. Gregory helped to establish Nature in the international scientific community. His obituary by the Royal Society stated: “Gregory was always very interested in the international contacts of science, and in the columns of Nature he always gave generous space to accounts of the activities of the International Scientific Unions.” During the years 1945 to 1973, editorship of Nature changed three times, first to A.J.V. Gale and L.J.F. Brimble in 1945 (who in 1958 became the sole editor), then to Sir John Maddox in 1965, and finally to David Davies in 1973.

Publishing in Nature

Having an article published in Nature is very prestigious, and the articles are often highly cited, which can lead to promotions, grant funding, and attention from the mainstream media. Because of these positive feedback effects, competition among scientists to publish in high-level journals like Nature and its closest competitor, Science, can be very fierce. Nature's impact factor, a measure of how many citations a journal generates in other works, was 29.273 in 2005 (as measured by Thomson ISI), among the highest of any science journal.
As with most other professional scientific journals, articles undergo an initial screening by the editor, followed by peer review (in which other scientists, chosen by the editor for expertise with the subject matter but who have no connection to the research under review, will read and critique articles), before publication. In the case of Nature, they're only sent for review if it's decided that they deal with a topical subject and are sufficiently ground-breaking in that particular field. As a consequence, the majority of submitted articles are rejected without review.
According to Nature's mission statement:

It is intended, FIRST, to place before the general public the grand results of Scientific Work and Scientific Discovery; and to urge the claims of Science to a more general recognition in Education and in Daily Life; and, SECONDLY, to aid Scientific men themselves, by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of Natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various Scientific questions which arise from time to time.

Landmark papers

Many of the most significant scientific breakthroughs in modern history have been first published in Nature. The following is a selection of scientific breakthroughs published in Nature, all of which had far-reaching consequences, and the citation for the article in which they were published.

X-rays —

Wave nature of particles —

The neutron —

Nuclear fission —

The structure of DNA —

First molecular protein structure (myoglobin) —

Plate tectonics —

The ozone hole — | issue=6016}}

First cloning of a mammal (Dolly the sheep) — | issue=6619}}

The human genome —

Peer review

Due to the intense competition to publish in Nature and the subsequent large volumes of submitted manuscripts, errors and irregularities in peer review are inevitable. There are a number of well-known cases in Nature where such anomalies in the peer-review process occurred.
   A series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön were published in Nature in the 2000-2001 period. The papers, about superconductivity, were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003 the papers were retracted by Nature. The Schön Scandal wasn't limited to Nature. Other prominent journals such as Science and Physical Review retracted Schön's papers.
   Before publishing one of its most famous discoveries, Watson and Crick's 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, Nature didn't send the paper out for peer review at all. John Maddox, Nature's editor, stated that "the Watson and Crick paper wasn't peer-reviewed by Nature... the paper couldn't have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field ... could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure..."
   An earlier error occurred when Enrico Fermi submitted his breakthrough paper on the weak interaction theory of beta decay. Nature turned down the paper because it was considered too remote from reality. Fermi's paper was published by Zeitschrift für Physik in 1934, and finally published by Nature 5 years later, after Fermi's work had been widely accepted.
   When Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield won a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for research initially rejected by Nature and published only after Lauterbur appealed the rejection,Nature acknowledged more of its own missteps in rejecting papers in an editorial titled "Coping with Peer Rejection":
� "(T)here are unarguable faux pas in our history. These include the rejection of Cerenkov radiation, Hideki Yukawa’s meson, work on photosynthesis by Johann Deisenhofer, Robert Huber and Hartmut Michel, and the initial rejection (but eventual acceptance) of Stephen Hawking’s black-hole radiation."

Publication of Nature and related journals

Nature is edited and published in the United Kingdom by Nature Publishing Group, a subsidiary of Macmillan Publishers which in turn is owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. Nature has offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, and Basingstoke. Nature Publishing Group also publishes other specialized journals including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, the Nature Clinical Practice series of journals, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology and the Nature Reviews series of journals.
   Presently, each issue of Nature is accompanied by the Nature Podcast featuring highlights from the issue and interviews with the articles' authors and the journalists covering the research.
   In 2007, Nature Publishing Group began publishing Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics, “the official journal of the American Society of Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics,”; Molecular Therapy, the American Society of Gene Therapy’s official journal, as well as and the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) Journal. Nature Publishing Group launched Nature Photonics in 2007 and Nature Geoscience in 2008. Nature Chemistry is slated to commence publication in 2009.
   Nature Publishing Group actively supports the self-archiving process and in 2002 was one of the first publishers to allow authors to post their contributions on their personal websites, by requesting an exclusive licence to publish, rather than requiring authors to transfer copyright. In December 2007, Nature Publishing Group introduced the Creative Commons attribution-non commercial-share alike unported licence for those articles in Nature journals that are publishing the primary sequence of an organism's genome for the first time.

Nature family of journals

In addition to Nature itself, there are three families of Nature-branded journals published by the Nature Publishing Group: � Research journals:

   *Nature Biotechnology � *Nature Cell Biology

   *Nature Chemical Biology � *Nature Genetics

   *Nature Geoscience (launched in January 2008) � *Nature Immunology

   *Nature Materials � *Nature Medicine

   *Nature Methods � *Nature Nanotechnology (Launched in October 2006)

   *Nature Neuroscience � *Nature Photonics (Launched in January 2007 ; ISSN 1749-4885 ; EISSN 1749-4893 ; website

)

*Nature Physics � *Nature Structural and Molecular Biology

Protocol: � *Nature Protocols (Launched in June 2006, journal homepage

)

   Reviews journals: � *Nature Reviews Cancer

   *Nature Reviews Drug Discovery � *Nature Reviews Genetics

   *Nature Reviews Immunology � *Nature Reviews Microbiology

   *Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology � *Nature Reviews Neuroscience

   Nature Clinical Practice journals: � *Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine

   *Nature Clinical Practice Endocrinology and Metabolism � *Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology

   *Nature Clinical Practice Neurology � *Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology

   *Nature Clinical Practice Oncology � *Nature Clinical Practice Rheumatology

   *Nature Clinical Practice Urology � Nature Online Publications:

   *Nature China (Launched in January 2007) � *Nature India (Launched in February 2008)

Further Information

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