---
title: "Nature (journal)"
chunk: 4/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_(journal)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:57:17.381596+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

In a 2003 editorial, "Coping with Peer Rejection", Nature acknowledged several other rejection missteps:[T]here are unarguable faux pas in our history. These include the rejection of Cherenkov 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.
The journal has also faced scrutiny for not following editorial procedure. For example, before publishing Watson and Crick's 1953 paper on the structure of DNA, Nature did not send the paper to peer review. John Maddox, Nature's editor, stated: "The Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature ... the paper could not 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."
In June 1988, Nature published a controversial and seemingly anomalous paper detailing Jacques Benveniste and his team's work studying water memory. The paper concluded that less than a single molecule of antibody diluted in water could trigger an immune response in human basophils, defying the physical law of mass action. The paper gained substantial media attention in Paris, France, chiefly because their research sought funding from homeopathic medicine companies. Public inquiry prompted Nature to mandate an extensive and stringent experimental replication in Benveniste's lab, through which his team's results were refuted.
The journal has also been criticised for its social stances. In 2017, Nature published an editorial entitled "Removing Statues of Historical Figures Risks Whitewashing History: Science Must Acknowledge Mistakes as it Marks its Past". The article argued against removing monuments to scientists with controversial legacies. Specifically, the editorial cited examples of J. Marion Sims, the 'Father of gynecology', who experimented on African American female slaves who were unable to give informed consent, and Thomas Parran Jr., who oversaw the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. The editorial made the case that removing monuments could result in "whitewashing history" and stated, "Instead of removing painful reminders, perhaps these should be supplemented." The article drew condemnation, particularly on social media, and was quickly modified by Nature. Nature acknowledged that the article, as originally written, was "offensive and poorly worded" and published selected letters of response. The controversy was intensified as the editorial was published shortly after the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In response, several scientists called for a boycott. On 18 September 2017, the editorial was updated and edited by Philip Campbell, the editor of the journal.
In April of 2020, the journal apologized for its initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in which it linked China and the city of Wuhan with the outbreak, which may have led to racist attacks.
Before the election for the 46th President of the United States, Nature published an editorial entitled "Why Nature Supports Joe Biden for US President". Political scientists Ffloyd Jiuyun Zhang found that this decreased trust in Nature and in the institution of science more broadly. Philosopher of science Byron Hyde argues that repeated presidential endorsements since 2012 were a mistake and that any benefits are overshadowed by the loss of public trust.

==== Retractions ====
From 2000 to 2001, a series of five fraudulent papers by Jan Hendrik Schön were published in Nature. The papers, about semiconductors, were revealed to contain falsified data and other scientific fraud. In 2003, Nature retracted the papers. The Schön scandal was not limited to Nature; other prominent journals, such as Science and Physical Review, also retracted papers by Schön.
In 2024, a paper titled "Pluripotency of Mesenchymal Stem Cells Derived from Adult Marrow", published in 2002, was retracted due to concerns raised regarding some of the panels shown in a figure, making it the most-cited retracted paper ever.

== Science fiction ==
In 1999, Nature began publishing science fiction short stories. The brief "vignettes" are printed in a series called "Futures". The stories appeared in 1999 and 2000, again in 2005 and 2006, and have appeared weekly since July 2007. Sister publication Nature Physics also printed stories in 2007 and 2008. In 2005, Nature was awarded the European Science Fiction Society's Best Publisher award for the "Futures" series. One hundred of the Nature stories between 1999 and 2006 were published as the collection Futures from Nature in 2008. Another collection, Futures from Nature 2, was published in 2014.

== Publication ==

Nature is edited and published in the United Kingdom by a division of the international scientific publishing company Springer Nature that publishes academic journals, magazines, online databases, and services in science and medicine. Nature has offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Boston, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Paris, Munich, and Basingstoke. Nature Portfolio also publishes other specialized journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, the Nature Clinical Practice series of journals, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, Nature Chemistry, and the Nature Reviews series of journals.
Since 2005, each issue of Nature has been accompanied by a Nature Podcast featuring highlights from the issue and interviews with the articles' authors and the journalists covering the research. It is presented by Kerri Smith and features interviews with scientists on the latest research, as well as news reports from Nature's editors and journalists. The Nature Podcast was founded – and the first 100 episodes were produced and presented – by clinician and virologist Chris Smith of Cambridge and The Naked Scientists.
Nature Portfolio 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.
In 2008, a collection of articles from Nature was edited by John S. Partington under the title H. G. Wells in Nature, 1893–1946: A Reception Reader and published by Peter Lang.

== Communications journals ==
Nature also publishes a number of journals in different disciplines, all prefixed with "Communications", which complement their other journals. These include:

Communications Biology
Communications Chemistry
Communications Earth & Environment
Communications Engineering
Communications Materials
Communications Medicine
Communications Physics
Communications Psychology

== References ==

== General bibliography ==
Baldwin, Melinda (2016). Making Nature: The History of a Scientific Journal. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226261454.
Barton, R. (1996). "Just Before Nature: The Purposes of Science and the Purposes of Popularization in Some English Popular Science Journals of the 1860s". Annals of Science. 55 (1): 1–33. doi:10.1080/00033799800200101. PMID 11619805.
Browne, J. (2002). Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated. ISBN 978-0691114392.

== External links ==

Official website 
Freely available scans of volumes: 1–112 (1869–1923)
Nature Index
For €9500, Nature journals will now make your paper free to read