Editorial Policies

As part of the Nature Portfolio, the Nature Research journals follow common policies as detailed in the Nature Portfolio journals’ authors and referees policy pages, and we request that our authors and referees abide by all of them. Nature Portfolio journals take publication conduct seriously. We reserve the right to decline publication of a paper even after it has been accepted if it becomes apparent that there are serious problems with the scientific content or violations of our publishing policies. Particularly, we want to draw your attention to the following policies and guidelines.

BEFORE SUBMISSION

All prospective authors should read and follow these policies:

Overlapping submissions

When you submit a manuscript to Nature Methods its content must not significantly overlap with any other papers from you or your co-authors’ groups that are under consideration or in press at other journals, with the exception of conference abstracts. We do, however, support the posting of preprints; you can find out more here.              

Related manuscripts

If you submit a related manuscript to any other journal while the submission to Nature Methods is under consideration, you must send us a copy of the related manuscript and details of its progress towards publication.

BEFORE PEER REVIEW

If we send your manuscript out for peer review, we will ask you for more information to help ensure that you comply with our policies and reporting standards; what we require may vary depending on the journal you are submitting to. In all cases, the corresponding author will receive an email from the journal editor detailing which documents from the list below need to be completed.
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For all manuscripts

Editorial Policy Checklist

This ensures compliance with our editorial policies related to research ethics and reproducibility, as well as competing interests, authorship, data and code availability.
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For manuscripts in the life sciences, clinical sciences, behavioural & social sciences and ecology, evolution & environmental sciences

Reporting summary

This structured form provides a consistent template intended to support our policies on transparent reporting. See here and here for more information about our policies on transparent reporting.
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For manuscripts in the clinical sciences

Clinical Research guidelines

Nature Portfolio follows the recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network for registration and reporting clinical studies.
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For manuscripts in the physical sciences

Authors of research articles in some specific areas should provide details of characterization, or experimental and analytical design in a reporting summary.

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For manuscripts containing new code that is central to the paper

Software submission checklist

Authors of research articles that contain newly developed code that is central to the main claims in the paper will need to provide details of the code for peer review evaluation.
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Policies specific to Nature Human Behaviour 

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