Nature Chemistry

About Nature Chemistry

Nature Chemistry: Journal Overview

Nature Chemistry is a monthly peer-reviewed journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature), dedicated to publishing high-quality papers that describe the most significant and cutting-edge research in all areas of chemistry. Launched in 2009, it was conceived as a highly selective general-chemistry journal — at a time when very few such outlets existed — offering authors from every subfield of chemistry a single flagship venue for their most important work (sources: nature.com/nchem/journal-information; cen.acs.org "Nature Chemistry Debuts", February 2009).

The journal's standing is reflected in its citation metrics. According to the journal's official metrics page, Nature Chemistry's Journal Impact Factor reached 24.5 (2025), with a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 24.0 (2025) — making it one of the most-cited chemistry journals in the world (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-impact, accessed October 2026).

Like other Nature-branded research journals, Nature Chemistry operates with a distinctive editorial model: it has no external editorial board involved in editorial decision-making. All editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors with relevant research and editorial backgrounds (sources: nature.com/nchem/journal-information; nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process).

History of Nature Chemistry

Nature Chemistry's story began in 2008. The first editor was appointed in February of that year, three more joined in April, the manuscript tracking system went live toward the end of July, and the first submission arrived soon after. The team was complete by October (source: nature.com "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3, April 2019).

The journal's first research article was published online on 22 February 2009, and after final proof checking, the first printed issue sprang into life on 19 March 2009 (source: "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3). At launch, its founding Chief Editor was Stuart Cantrill, who had previously been a senior editor at Nature Nanotechnology (source: cen.acs.org "Nature Chemistry Debuts", February 2009).

The launch was deliberately positioned to fill a gap. In a 2009 interview, Cantrill noted that there was a "surprisingly small number of what can be described as general-chemistry journals," arguing that Nature Chemistry would "offer value for money in that the content will be of the highest quality and will be relevant to the vast majority of chemists, rather than just a few members in any given department" (source: cen.acs.org, February 2009). A 2017 editorial reflecting on the journal's progress observed that its 2009 debut was "arguably the first of a new order of highly selective chemistry journals that publish relatively few papers each year," later joined by titles such as Chemical Science (RSC, 2010), ACS Central Science (ACS, 2015), and Chem (Elsevier, 2016) (source: nature.com "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815, July 2017).

Growth milestones followed quickly. The July 2017 issue was the journal's 100th issue, and it featured the 1,000th research Article to appear in the printed journal — which, in a coincidence the editors delighted in, had the words "One-thousand" in its title (source: "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815). In 2019 the journal marked its 10th anniversary with a special issue revisiting the theme of its very first issue — eight leading researchers had been asked in 2009 to predict chemistry's future in a Feature called "The future of chemistry," and the anniversary issue reprised the exercise with 58 contributors outlining their visions for the field (source: "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3).

Leadership and Editorial Team

The current Chief Editor of Nature Chemistry is Dr. Gavin Armstrong, who took up the role in the summer of 2022. He had worked on the journal since April 2008 — before its first issue — first as an Associate Editor and then as a Senior Editor. Armstrong graduated from the University of Leeds with an MChem in 2002 and remained there for a PhD in nonlinear chemical dynamics, studying pattern formation and travelling waves in excitable chemical systems. Before joining Nature Chemistry, he worked for the Royal Society of Chemistry as an assistant editor of Soft Matter and the Journal of Materials Chemistry, and he is based in the journal's London office (source: nature.com/nchem/editors, accessed October 2026).

As with all Nature Portfolio research journals, there is no external editorial board; decisions are made by the professional editorial team. The journal's contact page lists its current editorial management: Stuart Cantrill — the founding chief editor — as Editorial Director, Erika Pastrana as Vice President of the Nature Research Journals Portfolio, Deborah Sweet as Executive Vice President of Nature Portfolio, and Magdalena Skipper as Editor-in-Chief of the Nature journals (source: nature.com/nchem/contact, accessed October 2026).

An editorial snapshot from 2017 shows the structure of the in-house team: editors based in London, plus Marshall Brennan in New York and Xin Su in Shanghai, reflecting the journal's international author and reader base (source: "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815). The official "About the Editors" page publishes the scientific backgrounds of individual editors; recent senior editors include Katherine Geogheghan (synthetic methodology and palladium-catalysed cross-coupling) and Kathryn Ashe (prebiotic chemistry), both based in London (source: nature.com/nchem/editors).

Aims & Scope

According to the journal's official journal information page, Nature Chemistry "is a monthly journal dedicated to publishing high-quality papers that describe the most significant and cutting-edge research in all areas of chemistry." Beyond the traditional core subjects of analytical, inorganic, organic, and physical chemistry, the journal covers catalysis, computational and theoretical chemistry, environmental chemistry, green chemistry, medicinal chemistry, nuclear chemistry, polymer chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, and surface chemistry, as well as cross-disciplinary areas such as bioinorganic, bioorganic, organometallic, and physical–organic chemistry (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-information).

The journal actively encourages multidisciplinary research at the interface of chemistry with biology, materials science, nanotechnology, and physics — provided the central theme and the major advances fall within the bounds of chemistry. Beyond primary research, Nature Chemistry publishes review articles, News & Views, research highlights of important work reported in other journals, commentaries, book reviews, and correspondence, plus analysis of the broader chemical picture beyond the laboratory, including education, funding, policy, intellectual property, and chemistry's impact on society. The editors state that "in this way, the journal aims to be the voice of the worldwide chemical community" (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-information).

Nature Chemistry commits to publishing top-tier original research "through a fair and rigorous review process," offering authors high visibility, a broad readership, high standards of copy editing and production, rapid publication, and independence from academic societies and others with vested interests (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-information).

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Nature Chemistry's official editorial process page describes how manuscripts are handled, from submission through decision (source: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process).

How manuscripts are handled:

1. Quality and completeness check. The journal's editorial assistant checks that the manuscript and associated materials are complete against the initial submission guidelines.
2. Editorial assignment. The manuscript is assigned to a professional editor on the journal's staff.
3. First editorial decision. The editor reads the paper, consults with the editorial team, and decides whether it should be sent for peer review. Editors judge manuscripts on the degree to which they advance understanding of the field, the soundness of conclusions, the extent to which the evidence — including appropriate data and analyses — supports those conclusions, and the wide relevance of the conclusions to the readership. Only manuscripts deemed likely to meet the journal's criteria are sent for formal review; others are declined promptly without external review.
4. Peer review. If the manuscript goes to review, the editor contacts researchers with relevant expertise. Reviewer selection is designed to cover the different technical and conceptual aspects of the work. Authors may suggest reviewers — suggestions that are often helpful but not always followed. Reviewers remain anonymous to authors unless they choose to identify themselves.
5. Editorial decision. Once all reports are received, the editors decide either to invite the authors to revise and resubmit (addressing specific concerns point by point), or to decline publication — typically on grounds of insufficient support for the conclusions, or a reassessed judgement of the level of interest or advance in light of the reviewers' comments.
6. Appeals. Authors may appeal a rejection, but appeals take second place to normal submissions. A decision is reversed only if the editors are convinced the original decision was an error — for example, if a reviewer made substantial errors of fact or there is significant evidence of bias.
7. Transfers. If the editors decline a manuscript, authors can easily transfer it — including the reviewer reports — to another journal in the Nature Portfolio family via a link in the decision email. If the receiving journal judges the manuscript a good fit and technically sound, it may be accepted without further review.

Speed. The journal publishes its own speed metrics: the median time from submission to first editorial decision is 6 days, and the median time from submission to acceptance is 234 days (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-impact, 2025 figures). The journal does not publish an acceptance rate; authors should not rely on any third-party figure claiming to be one.

Double-anonymized review option. Nature Chemistry's submission guidelines invite authors to choose double-anonymized peer review if they wish — an option the journal lists alongside its standard single-anonymized process (source: nature.com/nchem/for-authors).

Impact and Metrics

The following metrics are published on Nature Chemistry's official journal metrics page (nature.com/nchem/journal-impact, accessed October 2026). Years refer to the metric year as displayed by the journal.

Historical note: The 2024 Journal Impact Factor was approximately 20.0 (per Journal Citation Reports; figures change annually). Like many journals, Nature Chemistry's metrics have fluctuated with broader citation trends in recent years — the journal's own metrics page reminds readers that citation measures such as the 2-year JIF are not necessarily measures of journal quality, and that Springer Nature is a signatory of DORA, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-impact).

Abstracting and indexing: the journal is abstracted and indexed in Chemical Abstracts Service, the Science Citation Index, Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, and BIOSIS Previews, among other services.

Submission Guidelines

Nature Chemistry's "Submission Guidelines" page sets out a five-step pathway: what to know before initial submission, preparing material for initial submission, the editorial process, acceptance-in-principle formatting, and production (source: nature.com/nchem/for-authors). Key points from the official content-types and author guidance (source: nature.com/nchem/content):

• Primary research — Articles. Nature Chemistry publishes original research in a single format, the Article, ranging from what are typically considered short 'Communications' to more in-depth studies. Articles are generally 3–8 printed journal pages; the main text may run up to 3,000 words (excluding Abstract, Methods, References, and captions), with a 150-word Abstract, up to 6 display items (figures and/or tables — the journal does not use schemes), up to 10 Extended Data figures, and around 50 references as a guideline. Articles are peer reviewed and carry received/accepted dates.
• Reviews. Authoritative, balanced surveys of recent developments, written to be accessible to non-specialists; main text up to 6,000 words, up to 8 display items, up to 100 references. Always peer reviewed. Unpublished primary research data are not permitted.
• Perspectives. Shorter, more focused scholarly discussions, sometimes advocating a position or speculative hypothesis; main text up to 3,000 words, up to 4 display items, up to 50 references. Always peer reviewed.
• Comments. Policy, science-and-society, or scientific issues of broad interest (often commissioned); typically 1–3 printed pages, up to 15 references.
• Correspondence. A forum for comment on issues relevant to the journal's community; typically 300–800 words, one display item, up to 15 references.
• Matters Arising. Scientific comments and clarifications on original research papers published in Nature Chemistry, submitted via a specialist process.
• Other formats include News & Views, Meeting Reports, Books & Arts, Features, the monthly Thesis opinion column, and In Your Element — the journal's much-loved one-page essays, each offering an accessible account of a chemical element, compound, or substance.

Submission portal: manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system (mts-nchem.nature.com), with a presubmission enquiry service available so authors can check likely fit before submitting. Before initial submission, authors are expected to confirm the journal's aims and scope, the accepted content type, the editorial policies, the publishing models and costs, and the preprint policy (source: nature.com/nchem/for-authors).

Open Access and APC

Nature Chemistry is a hybrid journal: authors submitting primary research articles may choose either the traditional subscription route or Gold Open Access. The peer-review and editorial process is the same under both models. Under Gold Open Access, the author(s) or funder(s) pay an Article Processing Charge (APC) on acceptance, and the final published article is then free to read for everyone under a Creative Commons licence (source: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/publishing-options).

APC (as displayed on the journal's official publishing-options page, accessed October 2026): £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00. Charges change over time, so prospective authors should always verify the current figure on the journal's official page before relying on any number.

Important limitations apply: non-primary research articles — Reviews, Comments, News & Views, and similar formats — are not eligible for Gold Open Access and can only be published via the subscription route. They must not contain original, previously unpublished research findings (source: nature.com/nchem/content).

Springer Nature also maintains institutional open access agreements that can cover publishing costs, plus APC waiver and discount policies for authors in qualifying circumstances — details are on the publisher's open access funding and support pages (source: springernature.com open access support).

Landmark Discoveries Published in Nature Chemistry

Rather than a single famous paper, Nature Chemistry's legacy is built from a decade and a half of selectively chosen, high-impact chemistry — and from content formats that became institutions in their own right. Several milestones are documented in the journal's own editorials:

The 1,000th research Article. By the journal's 100th issue (July 2017), the editors noted that Nature Chemistry had published its 1,000th research Article in the printed journal — a compact output that underscores how selective the journal has remained relative to high-volume chemistry journals (source: "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815).

The "future of chemistry" Features. The very first issue asked eight leading researchers to predict how chemistry would develop — topics included the crucial role of synthesis, the synergy between experiment and theory, chemical tools for investigating biology, and the outlook for solar fuels. Ten years later, the 10th-anniversary issue reprised the exercise with 58 contributors; recurring themes across the decade included sustainability, more efficient synthetic transformations, and the importance of fundamental chemistry for future energy needs — alongside a newly prominent theme: artificial intelligence and machine learning in chemistry (source: "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3).

In Your Element. For its first 120 issues, the journal closed each month with an "In Your Element" essay — an accessible one-page account of a chemical element, compound, or substance — eventually covering all 118 elements of the periodic table (plus deuterium and tritium), concluding with mendelevium in early 2019 (source: "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3).

Fields where the journal has been a prominent venue include metal–organic frameworks (a favourite of the journal's own cover lines — "Every MOF you make" was one the editors singled out), covalent organic frameworks, photoredox and electrocatalysis, and chemical biology — and the journal maintains curated collections marking major moments in the field, such as the Nobel Prizes in Chemistry for lithium-ion batteries (2019), asymmetric organocatalysis (2021), and click and bioorthogonal chemistry (2022) (sources: "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815; nature.com/nchem/collections).

The Nature Portfolio Family

Nature Chemistry is part of Nature Portfolio, Springer Nature's family of journals headed by the multidisciplinary flagship Nature. The portfolio includes the open-access journal Nature Communications, the Communications series (including Communications Chemistry), dozens of Nature Reviews titles — including the sister journal Nature Reviews Chemistry, whose founding Chief Editor was former Nature Chemistry editor Stephen Davey — and a large set of discipline-specific Nature-branded research journals (sources: nature.com/nchem/contact; "A chemical century" editorial, nchem.2815).

The portfolio model directly shapes authors' experience: if Nature Chemistry declines a manuscript, authors can transfer it — together with the reviewer reports — to another Nature Portfolio journal via a link in the decision email, and the receiving journal may accept it without further review if it is a good fit and technically sound (source: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process).

As the flagship general-chemistry research journal of the portfolio, Nature Chemistry sits alongside specialist chemistry titles: authors whose work is excellent but of narrower scope are often directed to sister journals such as Communications Chemistry, while Nature Chemistry reserves its pages for advances of the broadest interest to the chemistry community (sources: nature.com/nchem/content; nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process).

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nature Chemistry?

Nature Chemistry is a monthly peer-reviewed journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature). It publishes significant, cutting-edge research across all areas of chemistry, plus reviews, news and views, commentaries, and analysis of issues affecting the chemistry community, with the stated aim of being "the voice of the worldwide chemical community."

When was Nature Chemistry founded?

The journal's first research article appeared online on 22 February 2009, and the first printed issue was published on 19 March 2009. The founding Chief Editor was Stuart Cantrill (source: nature.com "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3).

What is Nature Chemistry's impact factor?

According to the journal's official metrics page, the Journal Impact Factor is 24.5 (2025), with a 5-year Impact Factor of 24.0 (2025). The 2024 Impact Factor was approximately 20.0. Figures are updated annually — check nature.com/nchem/journal-impact for the current values.

Who is the Editor-in-Chief of Nature Chemistry?

Dr. Gavin Armstrong has been Chief Editor since summer 2022. He joined the journal in April 2008 as an Associate Editor, holds a PhD in nonlinear chemical dynamics from the University of Leeds, and previously worked at the Royal Society of Chemistry (source: nature.com/nchem/editors).

Does Nature Chemistry have an editorial board?

No. Like other Nature Portfolio research journals, it has no external editorial board involved in decision-making — all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors (source: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process).

How does peer review work at Nature Chemistry?

Manuscripts are first checked for completeness, then assigned to a staff editor who decides — consulting the editorial team — whether to send them for peer review. Only papers deemed likely to meet the journal's criteria go to external review, where anonymous reviewers assess the work; the editors then decide among revise-and-resubmit or rejection. Double-anonymized review is available on request (sources: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/editorial-process; nature.com/nchem/for-authors).

What is Nature Chemistry's acceptance rate?

The journal does not publish an acceptance rate. Selectivity can be inferred from its editorial process — most manuscripts are triaged by the editors before external review — and from its median metrics: 6 days to first editorial decision and 234 days from submission to acceptance (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

How long does Nature Chemistry take to make a decision?

The median time from submission to first editorial decision is 6 days; the median time from submission to acceptance is 234 days (source: nature.com/nchem/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

What article types does Nature Chemistry publish?

Primary research appears as Articles (up to 3,000 words main text). The journal also publishes Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, Correspondence, Matters Arising, News & Views, Meeting Reports, Books & Arts, Features, Q&A interviews, the monthly Thesis column, and In Your Element essays (source: nature.com/nchem/content).

How much does it cost to publish open access in Nature Chemistry?

The Gold Open Access APC for primary research articles is £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00, as shown on the journal's official publishing-options page (accessed October 2026). Non-primary content (Reviews, Comments, News & Views) is not eligible for Gold Open Access. APCs change over time — verify the current figure on nature.com before relying on it.

Is Nature Chemistry open access?

Nature Chemistry is a hybrid journal: primary research articles can be published either under the traditional subscription model or as Gold Open Access under a Creative Commons licence (source: nature.com/nchem/submission-guidelines/publishing-options).

What was the first issue of Nature Chemistry about?

The first issue (19 March 2009) included a Feature called "The future of chemistry," in which eight leading researchers shared their visions for how their areas of chemistry would develop — topics included the role of synthesis, experiment–theory synergy, chemical tools for biology, and solar fuels (source: "Back to the future" editorial, s41557-019-0248-3).

Where can I submit to Nature Chemistry?

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system at mts-nchem.nature.com, linked from nature.com/nchem/for-authors. A presubmission enquiry service is available to check whether a manuscript is likely to fit the journal before a full submission.

Profile compiled October 2026 from official Nature and Springer Nature sources listed below. Metrics and policies change over time — always verify current figures on the journal's official pages before citing or acting on them.