Nature Impact Factor, Submission Process and Figure Requirements

Nature has published weekly since its first issue in November 1869. It covers all of science and technology and selects papers for originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Unusually for a journal of its size, it has no external editorial board: every editorial decision is made by its team of full-time professional editors.

This guide covers what you need before submitting to Nature: the current impact factor and the journal's other published metrics, how selective it is and how the editors decide, the length limits, the reference style, the open-access charge, the figure specifications (including the places where Nature's own pages disagree), and a checklist. Every figure comes from nature.com, Nature's research figure guide or Springer Nature, except the CiteScore, which comes from Scopus. All were checked on 8 November 2026 and are listed under Sources.

Nature impact factor and journal metrics

Nature's journal metrics page gives these figures, all labelled 2025:

The 2025 impact factor is the one Clarivate released in June 2026. Scopus has a running CiteScoreTracker for 2026 (81.2 when we checked), but treat it as provisional until the annual CiteScore is fixed. Nature does not publish an h5-index.

The same page gives two timing medians that matter more for planning than the impact factor: 8 days from submission to first editorial decision, and 321 days from submission to acceptance. That second number covers the papers that go through review, often over two or three rounds, so a paper sent out for review at Nature should be planned as a project of most of a year.

Nature acceptance rate and editorial process

Nature states that only about 8% of submitted manuscripts are accepted, and that most submissions are declined without being sent for peer review. The process runs like this:

1. Editorial assessment. The editors first decide whether to send the paper out for review. Authors are usually told within a week if it is not being considered.
2. Peer review. Most papers go to two or three referees; some go to more, and occasionally just one.
3. Revision. Every Article Nature publishes goes through at least one round of review, usually two or three, sometimes more.
4. Decision and transparent peer review. For submissions received on or after 16 June 2025, the peer review file (reviewers' reports and the authors' responses) is published alongside every research article.

You may suggest suitable independent referees, and the editors will normally honour a request not to send the paper to one or two competing groups, but not more. Double-anonymized peer review is optional: tick the box during submission if you want it.

Article types and length limits

Nature retired its shorter Letter format in October 2019, so all research papers are now published as Articles. The formatting guide sets these targets.

Other content types have their own limits:

• Reviews: a preface of at most 200 words, generally under 7,000 words, 4 moderate display items and no more than 150 references. Perspectives follow the same format. Unsolicited proposals for either need a synopsis with a 300–500-word outline.
• Matters Arising: ideally no more than 1,200 words and up to 15 references, with ideally no more than three Extended Data items. They must respond to a Nature paper published within the past 18 months.
• Correspondence: under 200 words, no more than 2 references and at most four authors.
• Analysis papers are published only occasionally, and Nature also offers Registered Reports.

How to submit to Nature

1. Optional: send a presubmission enquiry. Nature accepts them but does not require one, and usually replies within two working days. It is worth doing when you are unsure whether the topic is in scope.
2. Prepare one file. Initial submissions are format-flexible: within reason, style and length do not affect consideration. Upload a single Word or PDF file of up to 30 MB. LaTeX is accepted only at the acceptance stage; before that, send a PDF.
3. Complete the forms. Download the manuscript checklist and amend the manuscript to match it. Life sciences and behavioural and social sciences papers also need a completed reporting summary.
4. Write the cover letter. It is optional, but Nature calls it "an excellent opportunity" to explain why the work matters and why it suits the journal. Do not repeat the abstract. The letter is not shared with referees, so it is also where you declare conflicts of interest and related work that is in press or under consideration elsewhere.
5. Suggest referees and exclusions, and choose double-anonymized review if you want it.
6. Submit through Nature's online manuscript tracking system.

If Nature declines the paper, the transfer service can send the manuscript, the decision letter and any referee reports to a selection of other Springer Nature journals without re-entering the submission. For a paper with broad appeal, Nature Communications, which also covers every area of science, is the obvious one to consider.

Preprints: you may post the original submitted version at any time. The accepted version may be posted six months after publication. The published version may not be posted on a preprint server.

Open access and fees

Since January 2021, authors of primary research articles in Nature can choose between two routes:

• Subscription publishing. The article is available to subscribing institutions and individuals. Nature's publishing-options page states no charge for this route.
• Gold open access. The article processing charge is £9,390 / $12,850 / €10,850, and the article is published under a Creative Commons licence. Non-primary content such as reviews is not eligible for gold open access.

Springer Nature does not offer APC waivers for its hybrid and transformative journals, so check whether your institution has an open-access agreement covering Nature before you choose the gold route. Nature also charges for printing colour figures; the formatting guide asks authors to contact the editorial office for the price.

Nature reference style and citation format

Nature uses a numbered style:

• References are numbered in the order they are first cited, and the numbers are superscript in the text.
• When a reference has more than five authors, give only the first author followed by "et al."
• Journal volume numbers are set in bold.

To cite a Nature paper, copy the "Cite this article" text from its page. It takes this form: Jumper, J., Evans, R., Pritzel, A. et al. Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. Nature 596, 583–589 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2

Nature figure requirements

Nature publishes a dedicated research figure guide, and it is the most detailed source. Where other nature.com pages give different numbers, the table notes it.

Three practical points follow from the table:

• Design at 89 and 183 mm. They are the narrower of the two published sets of widths, so a figure built to them also fits the 90/180 mm figures.
• Keep text live. Do not convert text to outlines, embed fonts as TrueType (Type 42), and in Matplotlib set pdf.fonttype to 42 before exporting.
• "Not accepted" means as the figure file. At initial submission Nature accepts bitmap images in common formats, and the final-submission page accepts photographs as layered PSD, TIFF or high-resolution JPEG. What the figure guide rules out is a whole figure delivered as a flattened JPEG, TIFF or PNG instead of an editable file with the photographs placed inside it.

Extended Data figures follow separate rules: at most 10 items, a maximum size of 180 mm wide by 170 mm tall (the final-submission page says 18 by 24 cm), JPEG, TIFF or EPS, no larger than 10 MB, and at most 300 dpi. Supplementary Information should not contain figures; any extra figures belong in Extended Data. Supplementary files can be up to 30 MB each and 150 MB in total, and Nature prefers no more than ten files.

To check that a photograph has enough pixels for 300 or 450 dpi at 89 or 183 mm, use the image DPI checker, which has the Nature widths as presets. Journal figure requirements by publisher puts these specifications next to those of 13 other publishers.

Image integrity and generative AI

Nature Portfolio's image integrity policy is strict and screened by software:

• The final image must correctly represent the original data. Editors may use software to screen for manipulation.
• Adjustments such as brightness and contrast are acceptable only when applied equally across the whole image and equally to the controls.
• Cloning, healing and any other tool that obscures a manipulation are unacceptable.
• Images taken at different times or places must not be combined into one image. If juxtaposing them is essential, mark the borders clearly and say so in the legend.
• Lanes that were not adjacent in a gel must be clearly marked where they are re-arranged.
• Life science papers must supply unprocessed original images of gels and western blots, which are published in the Supplementary Information. Keep raw data and metadata after publication.

Nature's figure guide does not permit generative AI in figures of any sort, including content-aware editing tools in Photoshop. Large language models cannot be authors; any use of one should be documented in the Methods.

Data and code availability

Every Nature research paper must include a data availability statement, and papers that rely on custom code need a statement under the heading "Code availability". Prepare both before you submit, because the reporting summary and manuscript checklist ask about them.

Pre-submission checklist for Nature

• Summary paragraph of 200 words or fewer, fully referenced.
• Main text within the page budget: about 2500 words for 4 display items, or 4300 for 5 to 6.
• Up to 50 main-text references, numbered in order of citation and superscript.
• Title of 75 characters or fewer, and subheadings of 40 characters or fewer.
• Figure legends under 250 words each, which satisfies both of Nature's limits.
• Methods within about 3000 words, and Extended Data within 10 items.
• Single Word or PDF file of 30 MB or less for the initial submission.
• Manuscript checklist completed, and the reporting summary if the field requires it.
• Cover letter on significance and fit, with conflicts and related submissions declared.
• Suggested referees and up to two excluded groups.
• Data availability and code availability statements written.
• Figures built at 89 or 183 mm and no taller than 170 mm, with sans-serif text from 5 to 7 pt and 8 pt bold lowercase panel labels.
• Photographs at 300 dpi or more at final size, checked with the image DPI checker.
• Figures exported as AI, EPS or PDF with fonts embedded and text not outlined, in RGB.
• Colours checked for colour-blind readers in the colorblind simulator.
• Unprocessed gel and blot images ready, with only whole-image adjustments made.
• No generative AI anywhere in any figure.
• A decision made between the subscription route and gold open access at £9,390 / $12,850 / €10,850.

Related guides and tools

Legends at Nature carry a lot: a title, a description of each panel, and the statistics. The figure legend generator sets them out in a consistent order you can trim to Nature's word limit. Our journal submission figure checklist covers the checks shared by all journals, and our colorblind-safe palettes and fonts for scientific figures guides go deeper on those two decisions.

Nature does not accept AI-generated imagery in a paper's figures. The graphical abstract maker and journal cover maker are for talks, posters, lab pages and social posts about the work, not for the manuscript itself.

For the same details on other journals, see our guides to Nature Communications, Science Advances, PNAS, eLife and JAMA.

Sources

Checked 8 November 2026.

• Nature: journal metrics (impact factors, other metrics, median times, usage, ISSN)
• Nature: journal information (history, scope, editors)
• Nature: editorial criteria and processes (acceptance rate, review process, referee suggestions)
• Nature: formatting guide (Article limits, references, colour charges)
• Nature: initial submission (format, cover letter, preprints, transfers, reporting summary)
• Nature: final submission (final figure files)
• Nature: other types of submission, Matters Arising, presubmission enquiries, Supplementary Information and forms and declarations
• Nature: publishing options and our publishing models (subscription and gold open access, APC)
• Nature: peer review policy (transparent peer review from 16 June 2025)
• Nature: reporting standards (data and code availability)
• Nature research figure guide: specifications, building and exporting panels, Extended Data and image integrity
• Nature Portfolio: image integrity and standards
• Springer Nature: APC waiver policy
• Nature retires the Letter format (2019)
• Scopus: Nature source profile (CiteScore 2025)