Nature Reviews Immunology

About Nature Reviews Immunology

Journal Overview

Nature Reviews Immunology is a monthly review journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) in the United Kingdom. Launched in October 2001, it is the immunology flagship of the Nature Reviews portfolio — a family of high-impact review journals that filter, synthesize, and contextualize the most important developments across the life, physical, clinical, and social sciences. Unlike primary-research journals that publish original experimental data, Nature Reviews Immunology publishes only commissioned, expert-led synthesis: Review articles, Perspectives, Comment articles, and Research Highlights that survey, evaluate, and interpret the immunological literature.

The journal's reputation rests on three pillars. First, authority: its articles are written by invited leaders in the field and pass through the editorial hands of full-time professional editors who are PhD-level scientists themselves. Second, citation impact: with a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 47.1 (Clarivate Journal Citation Reports, as reported on the journal's official metrics page), it has long ranked among the top journals in the Immunology category, consistently in the first quartile (Q1) of both the Journal Citation Reports and Scopus. Third, breadth: the journal covers the full span of immunology, from molecular mechanisms of immune recognition to translational immunotherapy and vaccine development, making each issue useful to bench immunologists, clinicians, and students alike.

Nature Reviews Immunology publishes entirely under the subscription model: there is no gold open-access route for its content and no fee is charged to authors for publication. Authors of articles in the journal may self-archive their accepted manuscript six months after online publication. The journal's standard abbreviation for abstracting and indexing is Nat. Rev. Immunol., and its ISSNs are 1474-1733 (print) and 1474-1741 (online).

History

The story of Nature Reviews Immunology begins in January 2001, when Elaine Bell joined Nature Publishing Group as the launch editor of a new immunology reviews journal. After roughly nine months of development, the journal published its first issue — Volume 1, Issue 1 — in October 2001. The inaugural issue set the template that has endured for a quarter of a century: Research Highlights distilling important new primary papers, In Brief and Web Watch sections, several full-length Review articles, Opinion pieces, and Natureview features.

The timing was significant. In 2001, Toll-like receptors were just becoming established as key sensors of innate immunity — indeed, a Review on Toll-like receptors by Ruslan Medzhitov appeared in the journal's second issue and went on to accumulate thousands of citations — while regulatory T cells and the TH1/TH2 paradigm were defining debates in the field. The launch editor later wrote that starting the journal felt, in her words, "very similar to one's thoughts on giving birth" — difficult, and not to be repeated in a hurry.

Key milestones since launch include:

• October 2001 — First issue published (Volume 1, Issue 1), with Elaine Bell as launch editor.
• 2003 — Lucy Bird joins the journal as a copyeditor, beginning a long editorial career that would see her become Chief Editor and later Senior Editor.
• 2011 — The journal marks its 10th anniversary with a "Turning 10" editorial and a freely available Viewpoint in which the most-cited authors of each year reflected on the state of their fields, plus survey responses from roughly 130 leading immunologists on the decade's greatest achievements.
• January 2017 — Alexandra Flemming, previously an Associate Editor at Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, becomes Chief Editor.
• 2021 — The 20th anniversary is celebrated with "NRI at 20," a collection of 20 Journal Club articles highlighting major immunological breakthroughs since 2001 — a period the anniversary editorial notes saw the description of inflammasomes, FOXP3 regulatory T cells, follicular helper T cells, and innate lymphoid cells, none of which were known when the journal began, alongside the bench-to-bedside journey of cancer immunotherapy.
• September 2026 — For the 25th anniversary, the editors invite leading immunologists to reflect on the biggest open questions and challenges that will shape the future of the field ("The next big questions in immunology").

Aims & Scope

The journal's official aims and scope statement describes a mission to provide in-depth coverage of every area of immunology, ranging from basic mechanistic science to applied and translational work. Beyond full-length review articles, the journal spotlights recent developments and exciting new primary papers through shorter formats, and it reflects on the people, papers, and events that have shaped the development of immunology as a discipline.

In practice, the subject territory includes: allergy and asthma; autoimmunity; antigen processing and presentation; apoptosis and cell death; chemokines and cytokine systems; development and function of immune cells; haematopoiesis; infection and immunity; immunotherapy; innate immunity; mucosal immunology and the microbiota; regulation of immune responses; immune signalling; transplantation; tumour immunology and immunotherapy; and vaccine development. The journal also runs curated collections (for example on cancer research, extracellular vesicles, T cells, and mpox), an annual conference calendar, and themed anniversary content.

Content & Article Types

The journal's flagship content is the commissioned Review article — long, authoritative syntheses of major subfields, often richly illustrated with custom artwork and graphical summaries. Perspectives offer a more opinionated or forward-looking take, while Comment articles respond to pressing issues in the community. Short-form content includes Research Highlights, written by the editors themselves, that summarize and contextualize notable new primary papers; Journal Club pieces; and Viewpoints tied to anniversaries and milestones. The homepage also hosts curated Collections (for example on cancer research, extracellular vesicles, T cells, and disease outbreaks), an annually maintained immunology conference calendar, and themed editorial content such as the 2026 "next big questions in immunology" series for the journal's 25th anniversary.

A notable service to the community is the journal's poster program: for instance, the free "T cell nomenclature" poster summarizing the subset-based and modular naming systems, sponsored for open distribution and available with a print copy on request. The journal also engages the public through outreach events, such as its World Immunology Day 2026 program on inflammation hosted at the Francis Crick Institute.

Editorial Team

Like the other Nature titles, Nature Reviews Immunology has no external editorial board. Instead, all editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors, all PhD-level scientists, based at Springer Nature. As listed on the journal's official "About the Editors" page:

• Chief Editor: Alexandra Flemming, PhD — based in London, UK. She studied molecular biology at the University of Freiburg, completed doctoral research on the B-cell signalling protein SLP-65 with Prof. Michael Reth at the Max Planck Institute for Immunology, and did postdoctoral work on B-cell signal transduction at Cancer Research UK. She began her publishing career as an Associate Editor at Nature Reviews Drug Discovery in 2005 and joined Nature Reviews Immunology as Chief Editor in January 2017.
• Senior Editor: Lucy Bird, PhD — based in London, UK. Her interest in immunology arose from her undergraduate degree in Cellular and Molecular Pathology at the University of Bristol, followed by a D.Phil at Oxford on the role of HLA-B27 in autoimmune disease with Andrew McMichael and Paul Bowness. She joined the journal as a copyeditor in February 2003, rose through Associate Editor to Chief Editor, and now works part time as Senior Editor.

The wider journal credits include a Managing Editor (Christian Harding), an Editorial Assistant (Chellin Kalenga), production and art staff, an Editorial Director (Sharon Ahmad), and portfolio-level leadership: Deborah Sweet (VP Journals, Nature) and Magdalena Skipper (Editor-in-Chief, Nature journals). General editorial correspondence goes to nri@nature.com.

Review Process

Nature Reviews Immunology follows the commissioning-based model standard across the Nature Reviews portfolio. Most articles are invited: editors actively identify important topics and recruit expert authors, rather than primarily receiving unsolicited submissions. The official "For Authors" guidance is framed around helping authors "at all stages, from deciding whether to accept an invitation to write for Nature Reviews, to writing, revising and checking the proofs of your manuscript."

The editorial process runs from commissioning through peer review to publication. Although review articles do not report original experiments, every commissioned manuscript is peer-reviewed and revised: the official metrics page reports a median of 11 days from submission to first editorial decision and 141 days from submission to acceptance, reflecting careful editorial handling and revision cycles. Articles may undergo fact-checking and internal editorial checks, consistent with the Nature Reviews publication standards described on the journal's information page.

Because the journal publishes only non-primary articles — Reviews, News & Views, Comments, and similar formats — manuscripts should not contain original, previously unpublished research findings, and may include only minimal re-analysis of published data. Detailed manuscript preparation rules, article-length limits, and figure requirements are set out in the official "Preparing your submission" author guidelines on nature.com.

Impact & Metrics

All figures below are taken from the journal's official Journal Metrics page on nature.com (2025 metrics year):

• Journal Impact Factor (2025): 47.1 — placing the journal in the first quartile (Q1) of the Immunology category in the Journal Citation Reports, Science Citation Index Expanded.
• 5-year Journal Impact Factor (2025): 73.8
• Immediacy Index (2025): 8.5
• Eigenfactor Score (2025): 0.05940
• Article Influence Score (2025): 25.187
• SNIP — Source Normalized Impact per Paper (2025): 9.108
• SJR — SCImago Journal Rank (2025): 17.646

The same page reports 4,149,148 downloads in 2025 and 7,541 Altmetric mentions. Taken together with the Article Influence Score of 25.187 and SNIP of 9.108, these figures describe a compact, intensively cited journal whose relatively small output is read and cited at very high per-article rates — a pattern typical of elite reviews journals. Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and cautions that citation measures such as the 2-year Journal Impact Factor are not necessarily measures of journal quality, encouraging readers to consider a range of metrics. The journal has historically recorded even higher impact factors — third-party records show a peak above 100 in the early 2020s — but the most recent official figures are the 2025 values above.

Submission Guidelines

Because Nature Reviews Immunology is predominantly invitation-driven, prospective authors are encouraged to begin by contacting the editors. The official "For Authors" pages cover three areas:

• Why write for Nature Reviews? — the benefits of publishing a review with the journal and how the editorial team assists authors.
• Preparing your submission — the submission process including article format instructions.
• Editorial process — what happens from commissioning to publication.

Authors should not send complete unsolicited manuscripts by email; general editorial inquiries go to nri@nature.com. Manuscripts must follow the journal's article formats, and review content must be non-primary: no original, previously unpublished research findings, with only minimal re-analysis of published data permitted. Nature Reviews journals also disclose their policy on the use of Springer Nature-developed AI tools: such tools may support accessory content such as summary points, always edited and fact-checked by author and/or editor, with any substantive AI use beyond accessory content declared on an individual article basis.

APC & Open Access

Officially, articles in Nature Reviews Immunology can only be published through the subscription route; the journal offers no immediate gold open-access option, and — in the publisher's own words — "we do not charge a fee for publication." In other words, there is no article processing charge (APC) to pay. This policy reflects the nature of the content: because Nature Reviews titles publish only non-primary articles, most funder open-access mandates (which target primary research) do not apply to review articles, so authors generally do not need to take extra action to make review articles openly accessible.

Six months after online publication, authors may self-archive their accepted manuscript on personal websites and in funder or institutional repositories under the journal's standard licensing terms. Authors with specific funder mandates should check their individual requirements before proceeding.

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Nature Reviews Immunology?
It is a monthly review journal from Nature Portfolio devoted entirely to immunology. It publishes commissioned Review articles, Perspectives, Comment pieces, and short Research Highlights that synthesize and interpret new developments across the field, rather than original research data.

2. Who publishes Nature Reviews Immunology?
The journal is published by Nature Portfolio, part of Springer Nature, and is based in the United Kingdom. It belongs to the Nature Reviews portfolio of review journals.

3. When was Nature Reviews Immunology founded?
The journal was founded in 2001; its first issue (Volume 1, Issue 1) appeared in October 2001 under launch editor Elaine Bell. It celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2026.

4. Who is the Chief Editor?
Alexandra Flemming, PhD, has been Chief Editor since January 2017. Senior Editor Lucy Bird, PhD, has been with the journal since February 2003.

5. What is the impact factor of Nature Reviews Immunology?
The official 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 47.1 (Clarivate JCR), with a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 73.8. The journal is ranked in the first quartile (Q1) of the Immunology category.

6. How often is the journal published?
Monthly — one volume per year, twelve issues.

7. Is there an article processing charge (APC)?
No. The journal charges no fee for publication and offers no gold open-access route; articles are published under the subscription model. Authors may self-archive their accepted manuscript six months after online publication.

8. Does Nature Reviews Immunology have an external editorial board?
No. Like other Nature titles, all editorial decisions are made by an in-house team of full-time professional editors who are PhD-level scientists.

9. Can I submit an unsolicited review?
The journal works primarily by invitation — editors commission articles from expert authors. If you are interested in writing for the journal, contact the editorial team at nri@nature.com rather than sending a complete manuscript by email.

10. How long does review take?
The journal reports a median of 11 days from submission to first editorial decision and 141 days from submission to acceptance.

11. What is the ISSN of Nature Reviews Immunology?
Print ISSN 1474-1733; online ISSN 1474-1741. The standard abbreviation is Nat. Rev. Immunol. and the CODEN is NRIABX.

12. Where is the journal indexed?
It is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus, and is a Q1 journal in the Immunology category of both the Journal Citation Reports and Scopus rankings.

Profile compiled from official sources at nature.com, accessed October 2026. Metric values are for the 2025 reporting year as published on the journal's official metrics page.