Nature Electronics

About Nature Electronics

Nature Electronics is one of the most selective and most cited journals in the world for research on electronic materials, devices, circuits and systems. Launched by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) in 2018, it is a monthly, peer-reviewed journal that covers the full arc of electronics research — from novel physical phenomena and new devices through circuit design, computing hardware, sensing and the wider societal impact of electronic technologies. Its official 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 42.3, placing it among the very highest-impact journals in engineering and applied physics. This researched profile (NATEL-DEPTH-115-OCT2026) gathers the journal’s official metrics, editorial leadership, publication policies and most-cited papers from primary sources.

Journal at a glance

History and background

Nature Electronics was launched in 2018 as the electronics-focused member of the Nature Portfolio research journals — the same family that includes Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology and Nature Photonics. Its first issues appeared in early 2018, with editorials that month framing the journal’s mission around the relationship between deep technical innovation and the technologies reshaping society. In 2023 the journal marked its fifth anniversary with a dedicated series of short articles revisiting the key topics it had published over its first five years.

The journal was created to occupy a distinctive niche: it is neither a device-physics specialty journal nor a circuits-only engineering journal, but a venue that deliberately bridges novel phenomena, materials, devices, circuits, computing systems and the commercial and societal context of electronics. This positioning has proven durable. Within its first decade it became one of the most highly cited journals in electrical and electronic engineering worldwide, ranked third among 822 journals in that SCImago category in 2025 with an SJR of 12.430.

From the outset the journal has invested heavily in editorial content that looks beyond individual papers: annual “technology of the year” selections (brain–computer interfaces for 2023; three-dimensional electronics for 2024), themed collections, research highlights, news and commentary. These features explain part of its visibility — the journal functions not just as an archive of papers but as a running commentary on where electronics is heading.

Editorial leadership

Like other Nature Portfolio research journals, Nature Electronics has no external editorial board. All editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors with research backgrounds, who handle manuscripts, run peer review and make final publication decisions. The journal’s own editorial page describes this as a fair and rigorous process with high standards of copy-editing and production, swift publication and editorial independence.

The Chief Editor is Owain Vaughan, PhD. He joined Nature Research in 2008 as an editor for Nature Nanotechnology, where he handled topics across nanoscience and nanotechnology, and in 2016 moved into a strategy role developing the editorial and publishing strategy of the Nature journals in the applied physical sciences and engineering — with particular attention to electronics, robotics and artificial intelligence. He became Chief Editor of Nature Electronics in 2017, ahead of the journal’s 2018 launch. He holds a PhD in surface chemistry from the University of Cambridge and was previously a Junior Research Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. He is based in London. The editorial team also includes associate editors such as Matthew Parker, PhD, who joined the journal in 2019 with a background in physics and photonic-crystal devices for quantum information applications.

Aims and scope: what the journal publishes

According to the journal’s official aims and scope, Nature Electronics publishes both fundamental and applied research across all areas of electronics — from the study of novel phenomena and devices to the design, construction and wider application of electronic circuits. It also covers commercial and industrial aspects of electronics research, with an explicit focus on how technological developments may affect society. The journal brings together scientists, engineers and industry, and provides comment, review and analysis of the key issues shaping the field and the key technologies reshaping society.

Topic areas officially covered by the journal include:

• Novel device physics and materials: spintronics; 2D and carbon electronics (graphene, carbon nanotubes, transition-metal dichalcogenides); organic electronics; bioelectronics; optoelectronics; NEMS/MEMS; flexible electronics.
• Computing and circuits: neuromorphic systems and in-memory computing; analogue circuits; data converters; digital circuits; VLSI design; memory technologies; signal processing.
• Systems and applications: sensors; displays; RF electronics; wireless systems; power electronics; electronics for metrology and scientific instruments.

In practice, the journal’s highest-impact papers cluster around a handful of themes: memristive and neuromorphic computing, two-dimensional-material transistors, flexible and wearable electronics, spintronics, and the future of communications hardware such as 6G. Authors should note that the journal expects significance beyond an incremental device demonstration — papers are judged on novelty, conceptual advance and likely influence on the field.

Article types

Nature Electronics publishes primary research Articles and Letters, Reviews, Perspectives, News & Views, Comments, Correspondence and editorials. Non-primary research articles (Reviews, Comments, News & Views) may not include original, previously unpublished research findings and are only published via the traditional subscription route — they are not eligible for gold open access.

Publication model and open access

Nature Electronics is a hybrid journal. Authors submitting primary research articles can choose between the traditional subscription publishing model and gold open access. The gold open-access option was introduced for the Nature Portfolio research journals from January 2021. Articles published open access are freely available online under a Creative Commons licence.

The official article processing charge for gold open access in Nature Electronics, published on the journal’s own publishing-options page, is:

• £9,390 (GBP)
• $12,850 (USD)
• €10,850 (EUR)

These figures are subject to VAT or local taxes where applicable, and authors should always confirm the current charge with the publisher at the time of acceptance, since APCs are set by acceptance date. Springer Nature operates waiver and discount programmes, including dedicated support for authors from low-income and lower-middle-income economies publishing in the Nature Portfolio hybrid journals.

Journal metrics and performance

The figures below are taken from the journal’s official Journal Metrics page on nature.com (2025 values, released with the 2026 Journal Citation Reports):

Springer Nature is a signatory of DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) and notes on its metrics pages that citation measures should be considered alongside article-level metrics such as downloads, citations and online attention when evaluating journals.

Impact factor history

The journal received its first Journal Impact Factor in 2020. Historical values reported in Journal Citation Reports and third-party trackers:

The trajectory is unusual for a young journal: the impact factor has risen in essentially every reporting year, reflecting the field’s rapid citation of its early review articles on memristors, 6G and wearable sensors, followed by sustained citation of primary research on 2D materials, neuromorphic hardware and flexible electronics. Values for the intervening years (2023, 2024) are not independently verified here; the figures to rely on are the official 2025 values above.

SCImago standing

In the 2025 SCImago rankings, Nature Electronics holds an SJR of 12.430 and Q1 status in all of its categories: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Electronic Optical and Magnetic Materials, and Instrumentation. Within Electrical and Electronic Engineering it is ranked 3rd of 822 journals, behind only IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials and Nature Nanotechnology. Its SCImago h-index stands at 159 — meaning 159 of its papers have each been cited at least 159 times — with 212 documents published in 2025 and a 2-year citations-per-document figure of 17.53.

Landmark papers

The journal’s most-cited papers — verified via Crossref, with citation counts from the Crossref record — reveal the themes that built its reputation. All DOIs below resolve on doi.org.

Technology of the year and editorial collections

A distinctive feature of the journal is its annual “technology of the year” selection, chosen by the editors: brain–computer interfaces for 2023 and three-dimensional electronics for 2024. The journal also publishes curated collections — for example on the Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry — and ran a “Five years of Nature Electronics” series in 2023 revisiting key topics from its first half-decade. These editorial projects make the journal’s website a useful entry point for researchers trying to map fast-moving subfields.

Publishing in Nature Electronics: what authors should know

Nature Electronics is highly selective. While the publisher does not officially publish an acceptance rate — and no reliable figure is available — the combination of a 42.3 impact factor and Nature-family editorial standards means competition is intense and desk rejection of out-of-scope or incremental work is common. Practical points for prospective authors:

• Scope fit first: the journal wants conceptual advances with broad significance for electronics, not routine device reports. Manuscripts that would fit comfortably in a specialty journal are typically redirected.
• Novelty and societal context: the aims explicitly include the commercial, industrial and societal dimensions of electronics research; framing the work’s wider relevance helps.
• Timeline: expect a median of 10 days to the first editorial decision (desk reject or peer review), but a median of 268 days from submission to acceptance — peer review and revision at this tier take time.
• Open access choice: decide at submission whether to use the subscription route or gold open access; only primary research articles are eligible for the OA route.
• Submission: manuscripts are submitted through the journal’s online system on nature.com/natelectron, and author guidelines cover formatting, data availability and reporting standards.

Indexing, archiving and access

Nature Electronics is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) — the index from which Journal Impact Factors are computed — and in Scopus. Coverage history runs from its 2018 launch to the present. Full-text access is by institutional or personal subscription unless an article is published gold open access; the journal’s 2025 usage figures show over 2.6 million full-text downloads in a single year, indicating very broad readership for a selective journal.

A journal that reads the field as well as publishing it

What distinguishes Nature Electronics from equally cited competitors is the weight it places on interpretation. Alongside primary research, the journal commissions News & Views pieces in which independent experts place new results in context, publishes interviews with technology leaders, and uses its editorials to take positions on issues such as research reproducibility in device science, the environmental footprint of semiconductor manufacturing and the responsible development of AI hardware. The 2023 “five years of Nature Electronics” series is a good example: rather than simply celebrating an anniversary, the editors used it to trace how topics like memristive computing and flexible bioelectronics had matured since the journal’s launch. For readers, this means the journal works as a map of the electronics research landscape, not only as a repository of results; for authors, it means a paper here is likely to be read, contextualised and cited by people well outside its immediate subfield.

Not to be confused with

The electronics journal landscape includes several similarly named titles. Nature Electronics (ISSN 2520-1131, Nature Portfolio) is distinct from Electronics (MDPI, ISSN 2079-9292), npj Flexible Electronics and npj Self-Powered Electronics (also Nature Portfolio, different APCs and scopes), and the many IEEE Transactions in circuits and devices. Always verify the ISSN 2520-1131 and the nature.com/natelectron domain when citing or submitting.

Frequently asked questions

What is the impact factor of Nature Electronics?

The official 2025 Journal Impact Factor, published on the journal’s nature.com metrics page, is 42.3 (5-year: 46.4).

What is the ISSN of Nature Electronics?

2520-1131 — the same number serves for both print and online editions.

Who is the editor of Nature Electronics?

The Chief Editor is Owain Vaughan, PhD, who has led the journal since 2017. The journal uses professional in-house editors rather than an external editorial board.

Is Nature Electronics open access?

It is a hybrid journal: most articles are subscription-access, but authors of primary research articles can pay an APC (£9,390 / $12,850 / €10,850) for gold open access.

How long does peer review take?

The official medians are 10 days to first editorial decision and 268 days from submission to acceptance.

What is the acceptance rate of Nature Electronics?

Not officially published. No acceptance-rate figure is released by the publisher, and any third-party number should be treated with caution.

How often is Nature Electronics published?

Monthly — twelve issues per year, in English.

Profile researched from official sources in October 2026 (marker NATEL-DEPTH-115-OCT2026). Metrics should be re-checked against the journal’s nature.com metrics page before formal use, as citation indicators are updated annually.