Nature
ISSN 0028-0836 · Nature Portfolio · United Kingdom · active 1851–2026
Metrics
“Cites per paper” is a two-year cited-by rate computed from OpenAlex. It is not a Clarivate Journal Impact Factor — we neither compute nor license that metric. Citation rates differ enormously between fields, so compare within a discipline.
Is this the right journal for your paper?
The AI Journal Finder ranks the best-matched journals for your paper’s topic — with tier, open access, citation rate and predatory flags. Free to start.
Responding time
Turnaround figures are indicative, not a guarantee: DOAJ values are self-reported by the journal (average weeks, submission to publication); library estimates are medians of the received/accepted dates printed in papers we hold. Editorial times vary by article type and season — confirm on the journal’s own site.
Indexing & access
Access status: unknown. Where this comes from publisher-level signals rather than works-level data it is a heuristic — confirm on the journal’s own site, especially regarding any article processing charge.
Scope
Frequently asked
Is Nature a predatory journal?
Our screening does not flag Nature. That is not a guarantee of quality — it means the venue is not on Beall's archive (frozen since 2017) and does not match our name-pattern heuristic. It is listed in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, which is a positive signal.
Is Nature indexed in Scopus or Web of Science?
Per our venue index, Nature appears in: Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed. Index membership changes over time — confirm on the index's own site before relying on it.
What is the impact factor of Nature?
Papers in Nature are cited about 17.2 times each within two years of publication, and Scimago places it in Q1, with an h-index of 1843. Those are the open equivalents: the Clarivate Journal Impact Factor is a proprietary metric we neither compute nor license, so we show the two-year citation rate and Scimago quartile instead — they answer the same question of how heavily the journal is cited. A citation rate is a property of a field as much as of a journal.
What Scimago quartile is Nature (Q1, Q2, Q3, or Q4)?
Scimago places Nature in Q1 for its subject category. Quartiles split the journals in a field into four equal groups by SJR, so Q1 is the most-cited quarter and Q4 the least; Nature is cited about 17.2 times per paper over two years, with an h-index of 1843. A journal is ranked per subject category, so one spanning several fields can sit in different quartiles depending on the category.
What is the Web of Science (JCR) quartile of Nature?
The Web of Science quartile comes from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a proprietary product we neither license nor compute — so we cannot state a JCR quartile for Nature. The open equivalent is its Scimago quartile, Q1, derived from Scopus citation data. Because JCR ranks against Web of Science and Scimago against Scopus, the two can differ, so check Clarivate's site directly if you need the JCR quartile specifically.
Is Nature open access?
We hold no reliable open-access classification for Nature. Check the journal's own site for its access model and any article processing charge.
How long does Nature take to publish a paper?
Submission to acceptance for Nature takes about 334 days (median) — Estimated from our library (n=143 papers). Treat it as indicative rather than a guarantee: editorial times vary by article type, reviewer availability and season, and a self-reported figure is the journal's own. We do not hold a peer-review acceptance rate for Nature.