Nature Methods

About Nature Methods

Journal Overview

Nature Methods is a monthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) that specializes in publishing novel methods and significant improvements to basic life sciences research techniques. It is the Nature Portfolio's dedicated venue for methodological innovation — the place where new techniques, instruments, reagents, and computational tools are reported for their own sake rather than as supporting material for a biological discovery. Its widely used ISO abbreviation is Nat. Methods (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

The journal operates a hybrid publishing model: authors of primary research articles may choose between the traditional subscription route and gold open access, while non-primary content such as Reviews, Comments, and News & Views is published via the subscription route only (source: nature.com/nmeth/our-publishing-models, accessed October 2026). Like other Nature journals, Nature Methods has no external editorial board — all editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional in-house editors (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

As of the journal homepage accessed in October 2026, the current issue is Volume 23, Issue 10, with recent content spanning cryo-electron microscopy, foundation models for biology, spatial molecular data analysis, and wireless neural recordings (source: nature.com/nmeth/, accessed October 2026).

History and Evolution

Nature Methods made its debut in October 2004 — the first issue went live on nature.com on 29 September 2004, and 60,000 print copies were distributed to readers. It was launched as the first Nature-branded journal devoted solely to methodological development (sources: nature.com/articles/nmeth1009-687, fifth-anniversary editorial; nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

The journal was founded to address what its launch editorial described as a historical bias in scientific publishing against methods development: the perception that technique and method represented "tinkering" rather than conceptual work, and a publishing landscape that offered little incentive for describing novel techniques. The stated goal was to create a highly visible forum for the presentation of novel methods, on the belief that major methodological developments often grow out of the cross-fertilization of different disciplines — and that the methods sections of specialist journals, however useful, could not give technical advances the wide, interdisciplinary exposure they deserved. The journal addressed the broad audience of researchers working in the life sciences (paraphrased from the launch editorial, nature.com/articles/nmeth1004-1, October 2004).

The founding chief editor was Veronique Kiermer, working with manuscript editors Nicole Rusk and Daniel Evanko — all of whom, by the journal's own account, were novices at scientific publishing more comfortable calibrating a pipette than editing a fledgling journal. Despite early skepticism about whether a high-profile journal for methods alone could succeed, submissions grew steadily from about 60 a month in the first year to a monthly average of 125 by the fourth anniversary, and the journal's impact factor rose from 6.741 in 2005 to 15.478 in 2007 (source: nature.com/articles/nmeth1108-911, fourth-anniversary editorial).

Leadership changed hands several times as the journal grew. Daniel Evanko succeeded Kiermer as chief editor and led the journal for several years before departing for a head-of-editorial-services role at Nature Publishing Group; Natalie de Souza moved into the chief editor position at the beginning of August 2014 (source: nature.com/articles/nmeth.3097, September 2014 editorial). The current Chief Editor, Allison Doerr, joined the journal in February 2005 and has held the chief editorship since November 2018 (source: nature.com/nmeth/editors, accessed October 2026). The journal marked its 10th anniversary in October 2014 with a special issue highlighting ten areas of methods development with the greatest impact on biological research over the preceding decade, and its 15th anniversary in 2019 (sources: nature.com collections page for the ten-year anniversary; nature.com/articles/s41592-019-0594-5, accessed October 2026).

The journal's publication frequency is monthly: the current issue accessed in October 2026 is Volume 23, Issue 10 (source: nature.com/nmeth/, accessed October 2026).

Aims & Scope

According to the journal's official journal information page, Nature Methods is "a monthly journal publishing novel methods and significant improvements to basic life sciences research techniques" (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

Paraphrased from the journal's founding editorial and subsequent statements of purpose: the journal exists to provide a high-profile publication destination for methods developers and technologists, and an accessible source of information for biologists on important new laboratory methods in the life sciences. It welcomes work across the full breadth of basic life-sciences research techniques — from imaging, genomics, proteomics, and structural biology to computational biology, genome engineering, neuroscience methods, mechanobiology, and stem-cell technologies. The emphasis is on methodological advances reported for their own sake: the journal seeks techniques at a stage where they show definite promise and are likely to stimulate other researchers, not only methods with an established track record (paraphrased from nature.com/articles/nmeth1004-1 and nature.com/articles/nmeth1009-687; note: the dedicated aims-and-scope page could not be loaded during research in October 2026, so this section is drawn from the journal-information page and official editorials).

In practice, prospective authors are advised to check the journal's official aims-and-scope and content-types pages before submitting to confirm fit, and to consider a presubmission enquiry (sources: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines; nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

Editorial Team

Editorial decisions at Nature Methods are made by full-time professional editors based in New York, London, and Beijing. The journal has no external academic editorial board. The team as listed on the official editors page in October 2026 (source: nature.com/nmeth/editors, accessed October 2026):

• Chief Editor — Allison Doerr, PhD (New York). Began research in polymer chemistry as an undergraduate at Vassar College; PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University in George McLendon's laboratory, studying de novo protein receptor design and protein–ligand interactions by NMR spectroscopy. Covers biochemistry and chemical biology content including proteomics, metabolomics, and structural biology. Joined Nature Methods in February 2005; Chief Editor since November 2018.
• Senior Editor and Team Leader — Madhura Mukhopadhyay, PhD (New York). Undergraduate studies in microbiology at Mount Carmel College, Bangalore; Master's in human biology at the University of Copenhagen; PhD from the Pasteur Institute in Paris analyzing CD4+ T cell responses to a candidate HIV vaccine; postdoctoral research at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Pennsylvania on peripheral CD4+ T cell and follicular helper T cell responses against HPV-related cancers and HIV. Joined Nature Methods in March 2020 and promoted to Team Leader in July 2026; manages a large portion of the journal's Research Highlights, News & Views, Comments, Perspectives, and Reviews content.
• Senior Editor — Rosie Bunton-Stasyshyn, PhD (London). PhD in Molecular Genetics from University College London (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis); postdoc at the University of Michigan (paediatric epileptic encephalopathy), working with mouse models including new conditional disease models; senior scientist at the MRC Mary Lyon Centre managing genome engineering projects. Began her editorial career at Communications Biology in May 2024 and joined Nature Methods in May 2026. Handles manuscripts in genome engineering, genetics, omics, and biological models.
• Senior Editor — Arunima Singh, PhD (New York). Undergraduate biochemistry followed by a Master's in bioinformatics at the University of Pune; PhD from the University of Georgia using molecular modeling to analyze protein–carbohydrate interactions and developing a web tool for 3D structures of glycosaminoglycans; postdoc at New York University on computational characterization of protein–protein interfaces and peptide-mimetic inhibitor design. Handles computational biology, glycobiology, and structural biology. Joined Nature Methods in June 2019.
• Senior Editor — Lin Tang, PhD (Beijing). PhD in Computational Biology at the CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (transcriptome evolution); Associate Editor for Nature Communications from November 2016; joined Nature Methods as Senior Editor in September 2019. Handles genomics and computational methods.
• Senior Editor — Nina Vogt, PhD (New York). Undergraduate research at Heidelberg University (yeast); PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen on mRNA localization in Drosophila with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard; postdoc in Claude Desplan's laboratory at New York University establishing a behavioral assay for color vision in Drosophila. Handles neuroscience, model organism, mechanobiology, and stem cell content. Joined Nature Methods in April 2014.
• Associate Editor — Aparna Anantharaman, PhD (New York). PhD in Bioscience at the International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi (de novo design, synthesis, and testing of antibiotic peptides); postdoctoral positions in gene regulation and RNA biology; moved into research publishing in 2023 as Managing Editor and then Publisher for the npj Series. Joined Nature Methods and the Nature Research Cross-Journal team in September 2025.
• Associate Editor — Fariha Rahman, PhD (New York). Undergraduate degree in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley; M.S. thesis at the University of Washington on enzymatically triggered protein release from hydrogels; PhD in Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on multiplexed super-resolution fluorescence microscopy of gene-regulation targets. Handles optical imaging methods, probes, and related computational approaches. Joined Nature Methods in December 2025.
• Technology Editor, news and features — Vivien Marx, MA (New York). Multi-platform science journalist covering technology development; joined Nature Methods in 2012. Background in biology and computing; Master's from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow); recipient of the Georg von Holtzbrinck Prize for Science Journalism and a Knight Foundation science journalism fellowship at MIT. Her work has appeared in Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Methods, and outlets including The Economist, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Newsweek, and New Scientist.

(Source for all editorial biographies: nature.com/nmeth/editors, accessed October 2026.)

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Manuscripts submitted to Nature Methods pass through in-house editorial triage before any external peer review. According to the official journal metrics page, the median time from submission to first editorial decision — the point at which a manuscript is either sent out for peer review or rejected — is 10 days, while the median time from submission to acceptance is 276 days, a figure that includes all peer review and revision rounds (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact, accessed October 2026).

The submission guidelines describe a five-stage pathway: (1) pre-submission checks — confirming Nature Methods is the most suitable journal, that it accepts the intended content type, reading the editorial policies, understanding the publishing models and costs, presubmission enquiries, and the preprint policy; (2) manuscript preparation — completeness, initial formatting, language quality, and optional double-anonymized peer review; (3) editorial process, peer review, appeals, and transfers; (4) acceptance in principle and final formatting, including linking the corresponding author's ORCID to the manuscript tracking record; and (5) production and publication (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Notable policy points for authors: the journal accepts presubmission enquiries; it has a formal preprint policy and participates in the In Review preprint service; authors may opt into double-anonymized peer review; corresponding authors of accepted papers are asked to link their ORCID iD to the manuscript tracking account before final acceptance; and manuscripts are handled through the journal's online Manuscript Tracking System (an account is required; registration is available at submission) (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026). The journal does not publish an acceptance rate, and authors should not rely on third-party estimates of selectivity (no official acceptance-rate figure found on nature.com, October 2026).

Editorial policies across the Nature Portfolio are shared and publicly documented, covering authorship, competing interests, ethics and biosecurity, AI use, reporting standards and data/code availability, image integrity, plagiarism, corrections and retractions, peer review, confidentiality, appeals, preprints, and embargo policies. The Nature Portfolio journals have been members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) since August 2015 (source: nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/, accessed October 2026).

Journal Metrics

The following metrics are published on the journal's official metrics page, all for the year 2025 (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact, accessed October 2026). Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and cautions that citation measures such as the two-year Journal Impact Factor are not necessarily measures of journal quality, recommending that a range of metrics be considered.

Note the journal's distinctive metric profile: the 5-year Journal Impact Factor (52.5) is markedly higher than the 2-year factor (28.3), reflecting the long citation half-life typical of methods papers, which continue to accumulate citations for years as the techniques they describe become standard tools. This pattern is consistent across the journal's history — in 2007, just three years after launch, the journal already carried an impact factor of 15.478 (source: nature.com/articles/nmeth1108-911).

Method of the Year

Nature Methods' signature editorial feature is its annual "Method of the Year", designated each January since 2007: a field, approach, or technique the editors judge to have enabled major recent advances in the life sciences. Each selection is accompanied by a special feature with an editorial, primer-style commentaries, and a technology news feature (sources: nature.com/nmeth collections pages; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_Methods, accessed October 2026).

Selections by year (2007–2017 per the compiled Wikipedia table, a secondary source; 2025 confirmed from the journal's official year-in-review):

• 2007 — Next-generation DNA sequencing: massively parallel short-read platforms that increased sequencing throughput by orders of magnitude.
• 2008 — Super-resolution microscopy: fluorescence imaging techniques such as STED, PALM, and STORM surpassing the optical diffraction limit.
• 2009 — Induced pluripotent stem cells: reprogramming of somatic cells into a pluripotent state.
• 2010 — Optogenetics: genetically encoded opsins allowing control of cellular activity with light — confirmed as the journal's official choice on the nature.com January 2011 issue page (source: nature.com/nmeth/volumes/8/issues/1).
• 2011 — Gene-editing nucleases: programmable zinc-finger nucleases, TALENs, and engineered meganucleases for targeted genome editing.
• 2012 — Targeted proteomics: mass-spectrometry workflows such as selected reaction monitoring for reproducible quantification of defined protein sets.
• 2013 — Single-cell sequencing: genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenomic profiling at single-cell resolution.
• 2014 — Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy: high-speed, low-phototoxicity 3D imaging of living embryos and tissues.
• 2015 — Cryo-electron microscopy: single-particle cryo-EM achieving near-atomic resolution, enabled by direct electron detectors and improved software.
• 2016 — Epitranscriptome analysis: sequencing-based profiling of RNA chemical modifications such as m6A, pseudouridine, and inosine.
• 2017 — Organoids: three-dimensional self-organizing tissue cultures derived from stem cells.
• 2020 — Spatial biology (reported by a secondary source citing Nature Methods; not independently verified on nature.com during research).
• 2025 — EM-based connectomics: electron-microscopy-based wiring diagrams of the brain, chosen "for the detailed insights into brain structure and function that the generated wiring diagrams enable" (source: nature.com/articles/s41592-025-02997-5, the journal's official year-in-review 2025).

Readers should note that this list relies partly on a secondary compilation (Wikipedia); the journal's own collections pages archive the official Method of the Year features (source: nature.com/nmeth/collections, accessed October 2026).

Landmark Papers and Scientific Impact

Nature Methods has been the primary venue for several methodological advances that reshaped the life sciences, particularly in sequencing and computational biology. The examples below are all published in the journal and verifiable on nature.com and PubMed (accessed October 2026):

• Bowtie 2 (2012). Langmead B & Salzberg SL, "Fast gapped-read alignment with Bowtie 2," Nat Methods 9, 357–359 (2012), doi:10.1038/nmeth.1923 — a fast, memory-efficient aligner for sequencing reads that combined a full-text minute index with hardware-accelerated dynamic programming; one of the most widely used sequence-alignment tools ever published (source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22388286).
• HISAT (2015). Kim D, Langmead B & Salzberg SL, "HISAT: a fast spliced aligner with low memory requirements," Nat Methods 12, 357–360 (2015), doi:10.1038/nmeth.3317 — a hierarchical indexing system for RNA-seq alignment requiring only about 4.3 gigabytes of memory for the human genome; credited with more than 10,000 citations (sources: experiments.springernature.com/articles/10.1038/nmeth.3317; library catalogues, accessed October 2026).
• Salmon (2017). Patro R, Duggal G, Love MI, Irizarry RA & Kingsford C, "Salmon provides fast and bias-aware quantification of transcript expression," Nat Methods 14, 417–419 (2017), doi:10.1038/nmeth.4197 — a lightweight method for quantifying transcript abundance from RNA-seq reads, notable as the first transcriptome-wide quantifier to correct for fragment GC-content bias (sources: library catalogues; github.com/COMBINE-lab/salmon, accessed October 2026).

The journal's 15th-anniversary editorial (2019) highlighted the broader arc these examples sit within: over its first fifteen years, the journal witnessed the emergence of entire fields based on methodological breakthroughs — optogenetics, single-cell sequencing, light-sheet imaging, induced pluripotent stem cells — alongside the reinvigoration of established techniques including genome engineering, cryo-electron microscopy, and mass spectrometry by technological developments (source: nature.com/articles/s41592-019-0594-5). The journal reported more than 12.9 million full-text downloads in 2025 alone (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact).

Submission Guidelines

Before initial submission, authors are asked to confirm that Nature Methods is the most suitable journal for the work, that the journal accepts the intended content type, to read the editorial policies, and to understand the publishing models and costs. The journal accepts presubmission enquiries, and authors should review the preprint policy (the journal participates in the In Review preprint service) (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Manuscripts should be complete at submission, meet the initial formatting requirements, and be written in clear, accurate English; the journal offers guidance on writing and language. Authors may choose double-anonymized peer review, in which author identities are concealed from reviewers, by following the stated requirements (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Submission is through the online Manuscript Tracking System at mts-nmeth.nature.com (an account is required; registration is available at submission). After acceptance in principle, authors follow the final formatting guidelines, and corresponding authors are requested to link their ORCID iD to their manuscript tracking account before final acceptance. The manuscript then moves to production for publication (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026). Appeals against editorial decisions and transfers to other journals are handled through the journal's stated appeals-and-transfers route.

Article Processing Charges and Open Access

Nature Methods is a hybrid journal. Authors submitting primary research articles can choose to publish either through the traditional subscription route or via gold open access, in which the article is made freely available online at publication and the cost is met through an article processing charge (APC) paid by the author's institution or funder upon acceptance. Non-primary research articles — such as Reviews, Comments, and News & Views — should not include original (previously unpublished) research findings, may contain only minimal new supporting data, and are not eligible for gold open access; they are published via the subscription route only (source: nature.com/nmeth/our-publishing-models, accessed October 2026).

The journal advises authors whose funders require immediate open access (for example under Plan S principles or the NIH public access policy) to select the gold open-access route, noting that the subscription model is not suitable for authors whose funders require no embargo (source: nature.com/nmeth/our-publishing-models, accessed October 2026).

On the APC figure itself: Springer Nature states that standard APCs are published per journal, are payable upon acceptance, and are subject to change, and that authors should check the individual journal's website for the current figure and applicable licences, currencies, and taxes (source: springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals, accessed October 2026). No APC figure is stated here because no journal-specific APC figure for Nature Methods was verified on an official page during research in October 2026 — authors should consult the current official open-access page for Nature Methods before submitting. Springer Nature also operates institutional open-access agreements that can cover APCs, plus waiver and discount policies, with details on the publisher's open access funding and support pages (sources: nature.com open-access pages; springernature.com, accessed October 2026).

Key Facts

Indexing note: the journal's published metrics derive from the Clarivate Journal Citation Reports (Journal Impact Factor family, Eigenfactor) and Scopus (SNIP, SJR), indicating coverage in those citation databases (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact definitions, accessed October 2026).

Nature Portfolio Family Context

Nature Methods is part of the Nature Portfolio of journals published by Springer Nature. Article access panels on nature.com offer readers access to "Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals," situating the title within a family of more than fifty journals spanning the flagship multidisciplinary Nature, the Nature Research journals, the Nature Reviews titles, Nature Communications, and the Communications series, among others (source: nature.com article access-options panels, accessed October 2026).

Within this family, Nature Methods is the portfolio's dedicated venue for methodological innovation across the life sciences — complementing titles such as Nature Biotechnology (the science and business of biotechnology) and Nature Biomedical Engineering (devices, materials, and therapeutic technologies). Manuscripts declined by one Nature Portfolio journal may be offered transfer to a sister journal through the portfolio's transfer system, and editorial policies (on preprints, peer review, and publishing models) are substantially shared across the portfolio (sources: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines; nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/, accessed October 2026).

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the impact factor of Nature Methods?

The 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 28.3, with a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 52.5, as published on the journal's official metrics page (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact, accessed October 2026).

Is Nature Methods open access?

It is a hybrid journal: primary research articles can be published via the subscription route or gold open access at the author's choice; Reviews, Comments, and News & Views are subscription-only (source: nature.com/nmeth/our-publishing-models, accessed October 2026).

What is the article processing charge (APC)?

The current APC is set per journal by Springer Nature, is payable upon acceptance, and is subject to change; authors should check the journal's official open-access page for the current figure rather than relying on third-party listings. No APC figure is stated here because no journal-specific figure was verified on an official page during research (source: springernature.com/gp/open-research/journals-books/journals, accessed October 2026).

What is the acceptance rate?

The journal does not publish an acceptance rate. Any acceptance-rate figures found on third-party sites are unofficial estimates and should be treated with caution (no official figure on nature.com, October 2026).

How long does peer review take?

The median time from submission to first editorial decision is 10 days, and from submission to acceptance is 276 days (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

Who is the chief editor?

Allison Doerr, PhD — she joined the journal in February 2005 and became Chief Editor in November 2018, after a PhD in Chemistry at Princeton University (source: nature.com/nmeth/editors, accessed October 2026).

How do I submit a manuscript?

Through the journal's online Manuscript Tracking System (mts-nmeth.nature.com); you will need an account, which you can register when you submit (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Does the journal accept presubmission enquiries?

Yes — the submission guidelines list presubmission enquiries as one of the pre-submission checks for authors (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Can I post my manuscript as a preprint?

Yes — the journal has a formal preprint policy and participates in the In Review preprint service (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Is double-anonymized peer review available?

Yes — authors can opt into double-anonymized peer review by following the journal's stated requirements (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

What are the journal's ISSNs?

Print ISSN 1548-7091 and electronic ISSN 1548-7105; the ISO abbreviation is Nat. Methods (source: nature.com/nmeth/journal-information, accessed October 2026).

How often is the journal published?

Monthly — the current issue accessed in October 2026 is Volume 23, Issue 10 (source: nature.com/nmeth/, accessed October 2026).

When was Nature Methods founded?

October 2004 — the first issue went live on nature.com on 29 September 2004; founding chief editor Veronique Kiermer (sources: nature.com fifth-anniversary editorial; nature.com fourth-anniversary editorial).

What is the "Method of the Year"?

Each January since 2007, the editors designate a field or technique they judge to have enabled major recent advances in the life sciences — from next-generation sequencing (2007) and optogenetics (2010) to EM-based connectomics (2025) — accompanied by a special feature with an editorial and primer-style commentaries (sources: nature.com/nmeth collections pages; nature.com year-in-review 2025, accessed October 2026).

Who makes editorial decisions?

A team of full-time professional in-house editors based in New York, London, and Beijing; the journal has no external academic editorial board (sources: nature.com/nmeth/journal-information; nature.com/nmeth/editors, accessed October 2026).

Where can I read the journal's aims and scope?

On the official journal site at nature.com/nmeth (Journal Information, and Aims & Scope pages); authors should confirm scope fit and accepted content types before submitting (source: nature.com/nmeth/submission-guidelines, accessed October 2026).

Profile compiled October 2026 from official Nature Methods, Nature Portfolio, 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.