Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology: Journal Profile

Journal Overview

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology (commonly abbreviated NRMCB; ISO abbreviation Nat. Rev. Mol. Cell Biol.) is a monthly, peer-reviewed review journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature). It is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative and influential journals in the fields of molecular and cell biology. Rather than publishing original research, the journal focuses on synthesising, interpreting and commenting on the primary literature, making it a go-to resource for researchers who want authoritative, expert-guided overviews of fast-moving areas of cell and molecular biology.

The journal is part of the Nature Reviews portfolio, a family of review journals published by Springer Nature that covers the life sciences, physical sciences, clinical medicine and social sciences. As a Nature Reviews title, it is run by a team of full-time professional editors — PhD-level scientists — rather than an external academic editorial board, and all editorial decisions are made in-house.

Its standing is reflected in its citation metrics. According to the journal's official metrics page on nature.com, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology has a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 118.0, one of the highest impact factors of any journal in the biological sciences. It is ranked 1st out of 194 journals in the "Cell Biology" category of the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate).

The journal's content is published monthly, in English, and is available through the subscription publication route. Articles are presented with high-quality, professionally developed figures and display items designed to make complex molecular and cellular concepts accessible to a broad scientific readership.

History

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology was established in October 2000, as recorded by the Chemical Abstracts Service (CASSI) record for the publication. It was launched as part of the original wave of Nature Reviews journals that Nature Publishing Group introduced at the turn of the millennium, a period when the human genome project and rapid advances in cell biology created an urgent need for authoritative, expert-written reviews to help researchers navigate an exploding primary literature.

From the outset, the journal adopted the Nature Reviews editorial model: full-time professional editors who commission Reviews, Perspectives and Comment articles from leading researchers, working closely with authors through drafting, scientific editing, peer review, figure development and copy-editing. This hands-on model distinguished it from traditional society review journals and helped establish its reputation for unusually clear, well-illustrated and accessible review content.

Over more than two and a half decades of publication, the journal has grown into one of the most-cited periodicals in the life sciences. Its impact factor trajectory illustrates this rise: it stood at 35.6 in 2017 and climbed to 118.0 by 2025, placing it at the very top of the Cell Biology category. In 2025 the journal also recorded over 4.1 million article downloads and thousands of Altmetric mentions, underscoring its reach beyond the specialist community.

The journal's editorial leadership has evolved over time. Long-serving Chief Editor Kim Baumann, who joined the journal's team in 2009 and became Chief Editor in 2016 (as documented in the journal's former "About the Editors" biographies), led the journal for many years. As of October 2026, the journal's official editors page lists Eytan Zlotorynski, PhD, as Chief Editor, with Lisa Heinke, PhD, as Senior Editor — reflecting a transition in the journal's professional editorial team.

More recently, the journal has expanded its engagement with the research community through initiatives such as the early-career researcher (ECR) peer-review initiative, which allows and encourages established referees to involve one early-career researcher in the journal's peer-review process, and "Tools of the Trade" articles that invite early-career researchers to write about methods and technologies they are pioneering.

Aims & Scope

The journal's stated mission is to serve as the premier source of reviews and commentaries for the molecular and cell biology communities. It sets out to publish articles that combine scholarly authority with accessibility, supported by figures, tables and other visual elements that make the science immediately understandable even to readers outside the author's immediate specialism.

In practical terms, this means the journal seeks to:

• Publish Reviews, Perspectives, Comments and Research Highlights that are relevant to molecular and cell biologists.
• Maintain a broad scope within molecular and cell biology so that articles reach the widest possible audience rather than a narrow sub-specialty.
• Provide an unparalleled level of service to authors, referees and readers, with editors working closely with authors to maximise the usefulness and impact of each article.
• Deliver every article with clear, professionally developed artwork — figures are edited and often substantially developed by the journal's art editors.

Subject coverage spans the full breadth of modern molecular and cell biology, including gene regulation, nucleic acid metabolism, chromatin and chromosome biology, nuclear organisation, cell signalling, cytoskeletal dynamics, cell adhesion and migration, mechanobiology, cell death, autophagy, membrane biology, developmental biology, stem cells, cell growth and division, and ageing — areas reflected in the topic portfolios of the journal's editors. The journal also runs curated article series and collections, such as series on technologies and techniques and on structure–function relationships, that highlight emerging areas and cross-cutting themes.

In addition to long-form Reviews, the journal publishes Perspectives (forward-looking opinion and analysis pieces), Comments (shorter, timely commentary), Research Highlights (brief in-house summaries of important primary papers), and Expert Recommendation articles (practical guides, such as methodological best-practice pieces). The journal's pages on nature.com also host Collections that gather articles around a theme.

Editorial Team

Unlike many academic journals, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology has no external editorial board. All editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional editors, all of whom hold PhDs and have active research backgrounds. The journal's official editors page (nature.com/nrm/editors) lists the following editorial leadership as of October 2026:

• Chief Editor — Eytan Zlotorynski, PhD (Berlin office). Dr Zlotorynski earned his PhD in Genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, studying the molecular basis of common fragile sites in the human genome under Professor Batsheva Kerem, and then worked as a Research Fellow at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam with Professor Reuven Agami, where his research focused on discovering microRNAs with novel tumorigenic and tumour-suppressive functions. He moved into science publishing with Nature Protocols in January 2013 and has been part of the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology team since 2014. He is primarily responsible for the areas of gene regulation, nucleic acid metabolism, chromatin and chromosome biology, and nuclear organisation, as well as for technologies and techniques. Source: nature.com/nrm/editors.
• Senior Editor — Lisa Heinke, PhD (Berlin office). Dr Heinke completed her PhD in Biological Sciences at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, University of Cambridge, exploring WNT signalling and developmental genetics in flies and human cancer cell lines. After a short postdoctoral period, she joined Springer Nature in April 2021 as Editor of BMC Ophthalmology, BMC Gastroenterology and BMC Zoology, moved to the Nature Reviews division in August 2022, served as interim Associate Editor on Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, and returned to the journal in 2024. She is primarily responsible for developmental biology, cell signalling, cytoskeletal dynamics, cell adhesion and migration, mechanobiology, cell death, autophagy and membrane biology. Source: nature.com/nrm/editors.

Note on editorial history: archived versions of the journal's "About the Editors" page document that Kim Baumann, PhD, joined the journal's team in 2009 and served as Chief Editor from 2016. Third-party directories and encyclopaedia entries (including Wikipedia, crawled within the last two months) may still list her as editor-in-chief, but the live official editors page currently lists Dr Zlotorynski as Chief Editor — indicating a recent leadership transition.

Beyond the research editors, the journal is supported by production and art staff including a Senior Art Editor, Production Editor, Managing Editor and an Editorial Director (per the journal's "Journal Credits" page on nature.com), reflecting the heavy investment the Nature Reviews titles make in figure development and production quality.

Review Process

Nature Reviews journals operate a commissioning-based model: most Review, Perspective and Comment articles are invited by the professional editors, who identify topics and leading experts to write them. This means unsolicited full manuscripts are not the normal route to publication; prospective authors typically engage the editorial team first with a proposal or pre-submission enquiry (general editorial correspondence goes to nrm@nature.com).

Once commissioned, articles pass through an intensive, multi-stage editorial process. The journal publishes a formal "Editorial input and checks" summary (shared across the Nature Reviews portfolio) describing what every Review-type article receives:

• Editorial development: the scope of the article is developed with the handling editor; the text is scientifically edited; and the artwork is professionally developed by the journal's art team.
• Peer review: Review-type articles (Reviews, Perspectives, Expert Recommendations and similar formats) are peer reviewed by independent referees. The journal explicitly offers peer-review recognition to referees, and through its ECR peer-review initiative, established referees are encouraged to involve one early-career researcher in the review process as training and recognition.
• Ethics checks: articles are checked for plagiarism, references to unpublished work are verified, competing interests must be declared, and third-party rights for figures are obtained.
• Community standards: author contribution statements are included, author identification is requested, and the journal commits to diversity and sensitivity review standards.
• Every article is copy-edited before publication.

Short-form content such as Research Highlights is developed, researched and written in-house by the professional editors. Because the journal publishes only non-primary content — articles contain no original, previously unpublished data, only minimal re-analyses of published data — the peer-review process focuses on accuracy, balance, completeness of coverage, clarity and the quality of the visual presentation.

The journal does not publicly disclose acceptance rates or typical times from submission to decision, so prospective authors should contact the editors for guidance on timelines.

Impact & Metrics

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology is consistently ranked among the most-cited journals in all of science. The figures below come from the journal's official Journal Metrics page on nature.com (accessed 10 October 2026), which reports metrics sourced from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports and other providers:

• Journal Impact Factor (2025): 118.0 — ranking 1st of 194 journals in the "Cell Biology" category (Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate).
• 5-year Journal Impact Factor (2025): 147.0
• Immediacy Index (2025): 10.6
• Eigenfactor Score (2025): 0.08472
• Article Influence Score (2025): 47.386
• Source Normalized Impact per Paper / SNIP (2025): 20.928
• SCImago Journal Rank / SJR (2025): 35.568
• Downloads (2025): 4,166,636 full-text/PDF article downloads from the journal website and SpringerLink (COUNTER5-compliant).
• Altmetric mentions (2025): 3,839

For historical context, the journal's 2024 Journal Impact Factor was 90.2 (also reported on the journal's official metrics page), so the 2025 figure of 118.0 represents a substantial year-on-year increase. The journal's 2024 5-year impact factor was 128.7.

A word of caution on metrics: Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), and the journal's metrics page itself notes that small numbers of highly cited articles can have an outsized influence on measures like the two-year Journal Impact Factor, and that citation metrics should not be treated as a sole measure of journal quality. Readers are encouraged to consider a range of indicators — including the journal's rigorous editorial process, the authority of its invited authors, and its download and attention metrics — when evaluating it.

The journal is indexed in the major scholarly databases that underpin these metrics, including the Web of Science Core Collection (Journal Citation Reports) and Scopus (the source of its SNIP, SJR and CiteScore-family indicators), consistent with its coverage in third-party journal directories.

Submission Guidelines

Because Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology publishes commissioned review content rather than unsolicited primary research, the submission process differs from that of a conventional research journal. The following guidance is based on the journal's official pages and the shared policies of the Nature Reviews portfolio:

• Commissioned model: most Reviews, Perspectives and Comments are invited by the professional editors. If you are a leading researcher with an idea for a Review, contact the editorial team first — general editorial enquiries and correspondence go to nrm@nature.com — rather than submitting a full unsolicited manuscript.
• Manuscript system: invited authors submit through the journal's online manuscript tracking system (the Nature Reviews titles use the "mts" submission platform; for this journal, the system address reported in journal directories is mts-nrm.nature.com). Manuscripts under consideration should be directed to the Editorial Assistant at nrm@nature.com.
• Article formats: the journal considers Reviews (comprehensive, authoritative overviews), Perspectives (forward-looking analysis and opinion), Comments (shorter timely pieces), Expert Recommendations (practical/methodological guides) and Tools of the Trade (early-career researcher method showcases — prospective authors are invited to email nrm@nature.com with the method or tool they would like to write about and why it matters).
• What to prepare: Nature Reviews articles are expected to be authoritative, accessible to non-specialists, and richly illustrated. Editors work with authors on scope, scientific editing and figure development, so proposals should emphasise why the topic is timely, what makes the author team authoritative, and how the article would be structured.
• Policies: authors agree to the journal's standard licensing terms, including its self-archiving policies; competing interests must be declared; and all Review-type articles undergo peer review, plagiarism checks and copy-editing before publication.

Detailed, up-to-date author instructions are published on the journal's website (nature.com/nrm), and prospective authors should consult those pages — and contact the editors — before preparing a submission.

APC / Open Access

Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology does not charge an article processing charge (APC). According to the official publishing-model policy published on nature.com for the Nature Reviews journals:

• Articles in Nature Reviews can only be published via the subscription publication route — the journals do not offer an immediate gold open access option.
• There is no fee for publication — authors are not charged an APC.
• Six months after online publication, authors may self-archive the accepted manuscript on their own personal website and/or in funder or institutional repositories, which allows compliance with most funders' open-access mandates for this type of non-primary content.
• The policy notes that because Nature Reviews articles are non-primary content (no original research findings), most funders' OA mandates — which typically apply only to funded primary research — do not require these articles to be published open access.

Source: the "Publishing model" pages for the Nature Reviews journals on nature.com (accessed October 2026), which state the policy shared across the Nature Reviews portfolio, including this journal.

Acceptance rate and review timelines: the journal does not publicly disclose acceptance rates or submission-to-decision times. Third-party directories that estimate such figures are not official sources; treat any published acceptance-rate figure for this journal as unverified.

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

It is a monthly, peer-reviewed review journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) that publishes Reviews, Perspectives, Comments and Research Highlights covering all aspects of molecular and cell biology. It publishes synthesis and commentary on the primary literature rather than original research articles.

2. What is the impact factor of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

The journal's official metrics page on nature.com reports a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 118.0 (sourced from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports), with a 5-year impact factor of 147.0. This places it 1st out of 194 journals in the Cell Biology category.

3. Who is the editor-in-chief (Chief Editor) of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

According to the journal's official editors page (nature.com/nrm/editors, accessed October 2026), the Chief Editor is Eytan Zlotorynski, PhD, a geneticist formerly at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Netherlands Cancer Institute, who has been with the journal's team since 2014. Note that some third-party sources still list former Chief Editor Kim Baumann, who led the journal from 2016; the official page now lists Dr Zlotorynski.

4. Does Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology charge an article processing charge (APC)?

No. Per the official Nature Reviews publishing-model policy on nature.com, the journal publishes via the subscription route only, does not offer a gold open access option, and charges no fee for publication.

5. Is Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology open access?

No — it is a subscription journal with no immediate gold open access option. However, authors may self-archive the accepted manuscript on a personal website or in funder/institutional repositories six months after online publication.

6. When was Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology founded?

The journal was established in October 2000, according to its Chemical Abstracts Service (CASSI) publication record, as part of the original Nature Reviews portfolio launched by Nature Publishing Group.

7. How do I submit a paper to Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

The journal works primarily on a commissioned model: editors invite leading researchers to write Reviews, Perspectives and Comments. Prospective authors should first contact the editorial team at nrm@nature.com with a proposal rather than submitting a full unsolicited manuscript. Invited authors submit via the journal's online manuscript tracking system.

8. Is Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology peer reviewed?

Yes. All Review-type articles (Reviews, Perspectives, Expert Recommendations and similar formats) are peer reviewed by independent referees, in addition to scientific editing by the in-house editors, plagiarism checks, and copy-editing. Short-form content such as Research Highlights is written in-house by the professional editors.

9. What is the ISSN of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

The journal's official site (nature.com/nrm/about) lists ISSN 1759-5029 (print) and 1759-5037 (online). Older databases may still show the journal's previous ISSNs, 1471-0072 (print) and 1471-0080 (online).

10. What subjects does Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology cover?

Its scope spans all of molecular and cell biology: gene regulation, nucleic acid metabolism, chromatin and chromosome biology, nuclear organisation, cell signalling, cytoskeletal dynamics, cell adhesion and migration, mechanobiology, cell death, autophagy, membrane biology, developmental biology, stem cells, cell growth and division, and ageing, plus emerging technologies and techniques.

11. What is the acceptance rate of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology?

Not publicly disclosed. The journal does not publish acceptance rates or submission-to-decision times, and because most content is commissioned, conventional acceptance-rate statistics would be of limited meaning. Any acceptance-rate figure found on third-party sites should be treated as unverified.

12. Who publishes Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology and how often does it appear?

It is published monthly by Nature Portfolio, the journal division of Springer Nature, in English. Its homepage is nature.com/nrm and general editorial correspondence goes to nrm@nature.com.