Giving great research the attention it deserves

Author: Deborah Sweet

Executive VP Journals, Nature Portfolio

It’s the start of October, and for those of us in and around the research community that means it’s time to get excited about learning who, and what, will be selected for the Nobel prize this year. 

The Nobel prizes are truly unique in their global recognition and reach.  The research-oriented prizes are a once-a-year celebration of the value and impact of groundbreaking fundamental research, and the vital role it plays in moving us and our planet forward.  Countries around the world are justifiably proud of the number of winners they can claim as their own, either through origin or through adopted home.  The city where I live, Boston (USA), even has a display celebrating local winners adorning one terminal of its main airport.  

At Nature Portfolio, we too are proud of the part that we have played in this history.  Each year when the Nobel prize announcements come out, we celebrate the winners and their contributions by highlighting the articles they have chosen to publish with us (see for example the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). Looking back over time, we are grateful that 75% of the researchers who have received scientific Nobel prizes (Physiology or Medicine, Chemistry, Physics) in the past 50 years have chosen to publish at least some of their work in Nature and Nature Portfolio journals.   

Publication is an important part of the overall research process, and our journals have stood the test of time.  For over 150 years, Nature and the Nature Portfolio of journals have focused on giving important research advances a platform that brings them to the research community and beyond.  Much has changed about the publishing process in that time – including distribution mechanisms, approaches to peer review, introduction of open access models, and community expectations around reporting and sharing to ensure rigor and reproducibility, and Nature Portfolio journals have often played a leading role in moving the community forward.  But what has not changed is the value that authors, reviewers, and readers place on journals that bring together important advances across fields and highlight them to the world. 

As a member of the Nature Portfolio team, I get to work every day with a talented team of scientific editors who are focused on bringing that value to life.   Across our Nature-branded research journals we currently employ over 450 full-time professional editors for research manuscripts. They all have advanced domain expertise that helps them not only evaluate the evidence and conclusions reached in each paper, but also to select the most important and rigorous work for publication. For Nature itself, this means that each editor carefully evaluates 12 papers to find one that the community would expect to see in the journal. At other Nature Portfolio research journals this ratio can be a little higher or a little lower.   

As part of this evaluation process, our editors use their expertise to identify a curated set of specialist reviewers who make an in-depth assessment of the work and ensure that the results fully support the conclusions.  They also work with authors to guide them in revising and developing their paper, including making sure that they meet our high standards for research integrity and reproducibility, and that their methods, data, and code are documented and available, through a constructive and interactive dialogue approach that sets our journals apart.  It’s no coincidence that in post-publication surveys 90% of Nature Portfolio authors agree that “the advice and comments from manuscript editors helped to improve their paper”, and as one recent author said “I would like to sincerely thank you for the quality of the editorial process. It was highly professional at every stage, with solid reviewers who provided insightful comments, and an editorial team that combined scientific rigor with a flexible and open attitude. It has truly been a pleasure to work with you.” 

All of that care is manifest in the value we give authors in terms of the recognition and visibility of their work. As an illustration, research articles in Nature-branded journals published in 2024 have each been cited on average 21.7 times per year, 8 times more than articles published in an average Springer Nature journal, which are cited 2.8 times on average, and downloaded over 12,000 times per year, compared to just over 900 times at an average journal—an impressive 13 times more. To complement the research articles we publish, we also commission commentaries to highlight and interpret research findings, and our press team work in collaboration with researchers and media organizations to ensure that important research advances have wider reach.  Nature itself also has an award-winning magazine news and comment team, reporting on research advances and other issues relevant to the research community.   

Maintaining these high standards, along with the infrastructure and technology needed to support them, does come at a cost, covered through journal subscriptions or open access publishing fees. In keeping with community expectations, our research journals all now offer an open access APC-based publishing option, either exclusively (Nature Communications) or as a choice for authors, and the APC levels associated with our journals reflect the investment we put in.  It’s worth highlighting, though, that while our APCs are 2-4x higher than average, if compared to receiving 8 or 13 times more citations and downloads, respectively, the “return on investment” for researchers of publishing in Nature Portfolio journals in terms of quality, visibility and reach remains high.  We estimate that historically only around 1% of the grant funding awarded by agencies such as the NIH or the EU has gone towards the cost of publication, which we view as helping to unlock the value of the remaining 99% for researchers, institutions, industry and the public. 

We think of ourselves as partners for the research community.  All of the credit for the research ideas and the effort involved in testing them of course goes to the researchers themselves.  Our role is to help make sure that reporting of that research meets the highest standards of rigor, transparency, and reproducibility, and that other people can see what the researchers have learned, will trust, understand, and appreciate it, and can then build on and apply it.  With our support as a high-quality global publisher, the researchers who did the work get the platform and recognition they deserve, and readers around the world can use the new insights to guide their own future journey.