Nature Reviews Nephrology

About Nature Reviews Nephrology

About Nature Reviews Nephrology

Nature Reviews Nephrology is a monthly, peer-reviewed review journal published by Springer Nature as part of the Nature Portfolio. It is widely regarded as one of the most influential journals in kidney medicine: rather than publishing original research, it publishes authoritative, expert-written reviews and commentaries that synthesize the state of nephrology for clinicians and scientists alike. Its stated ambition, in the journal's own words, is to be "the premier source of reviews and commentaries" for the nephrology community, serving both nephrologists and basic science researchers with articles that are authoritative, accessible, and enhanced with clear figures, tables, and display items.

The journal's content is almost entirely commissioned. Instead of accepting unsolicited original research manuscripts, the editorial team invites leading experts to write in-depth Reviews, shorter News & Views pieces, Research Highlights, Comments, Perspectives, and Consensus Statements. This commissioned model is deliberate: the editors scan the fast-moving nephrology literature and ask the people best placed to interpret it — often the researchers behind the breakthroughs themselves — to explain what new findings mean for science and for patient care. The result is a journal that functions as a curated, high-signal digest of kidney medicine, translating discovery into clinical relevance.

Coverage spans the full breadth of nephrology in adults and children: chronic kidney disease, acute kidney injury, dialysis and renal replacement therapy, kidney transplantation, glomerular disease, hypertension, diabetic kidney disease, fluid and electrolyte disorders, kidney stones, infection and inflammation of the kidney, applied renal physiology, renal pathology, immunology, kidney cancer, and the genetics and epidemiology of kidney disease. The journal also bridges nephrology with neighboring fields — cardiology, endocrinology, immunology, and intensive care medicine — reflecting how kidney disease intersects with systemic illness.

History

Nature Reviews Nephrology began life in January 2005 under a different name: Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology. The Nature Clinical Practice series was launched by the Nature Publishing Group to give busy clinicians practical, clinically oriented review content, and the nephrology title — with ISSNs 1745-8323 (print) and 1745-8331 (electronic) — was led by Editor-in-Chief Robert W. Schrier, MD, a renowned nephrologist. Its mission, as described at the time, was to reduce the time nephrologists spend reading by filtering original research and providing peer-reviewed discussion and analysis.

In April 2009, the Nature Clinical Practice journals were folded into the Nature Reviews portfolio and rebranded. Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology became Nature Reviews Nephrology, continuing the same volume numbering — the first issue under the new title was Volume 5, Number 4 (April 2009), as recorded in the NLM Catalog. The rebrand reflected a broadened ambition: from a primarily clinical-practice digest to a premier review journal serving both the clinic and the laboratory. Susan Allison, PhD, was appointed Chief Editor of the retitled journal in 2009 and continues to lead it, adding a Consulting Editor role for Nature itself in June 2020.

Since the rebrand, the journal's influence has grown steadily. Its impact factor has climbed from the high teens in the early 2010s into the 40s, and it has become the highest-ranked journal in the Urology & Nephrology category of the Journal Citation Reports. The journal celebrated its 20th year of continuous publication (counting the Nature Clinical Practice era) in 2025, with the publisher noting that more than half of its 2025 articles related to one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Aims and Scope

The journal's official aims and scope statement defines its editorial mission: to be the premier source of reviews and commentaries for the scientific communities it serves, publishing articles that are authoritative and accessible, with clearly understandable figures and tables, and providing an unparalleled service to authors, referees, and readers so as to maximize the usefulness and impact of each article.

In practice, the journal publishes the following article types:

• Reviews — comprehensive, authoritative syntheses of a topic, the journal's flagship content.
• Perspectives — forward-looking, opinion-driven pieces from leading thinkers.
• Consensus Statements — evidence-based recommendations developed by expert working groups (for example, the ADQI consensus reports on acute kidney disease).
• Comments — shorter opinion and analysis pieces on timely developments.
• News & Views — concise expert commentary placing a newly published primary paper in context.
• Research Highlights — brief summaries filtering notable findings from across the specialty and general medical literature.

Topic coverage, as described by the International Society of Nephrology's listing of the journal, includes all areas concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of kidney disorders in adults and children: hypertension, infection and inflammation, dialysis and chronic uremia, renal failure, transplantation, applied physiology, epidemiology, pathology, immunology, cancer, and genetics. The scope is intentionally broad so that published work reaches the widest possible audience across nephrology and adjacent disciplines.

Authors should note that the journal publishes non-primary content only — Reviews, News & Views, and Comments — and does not publish original research articles. Most of its content is commissioned by the editors, although the journal does consider unsolicited proposals; prospective authors are directed to the "writing for us" guidance on the journal's website.

Editorial Leadership

Editorial decisions at Nature Reviews Nephrology are made by a team of full-time professional editors who are PhD-level scientists, supported by an external advisory board of practicing nephrologists and researchers. This in-house professional-editor model — standard across the Nature Reviews portfolio — means that commissioning, peer review, and editorial development are handled by career editors with deep subject expertise rather than by part-time academic editors.

The journal's Chief Editor is Susan Allison, PhD, based in Sydney, Australia. After an honours degree in Biochemistry at the University of Otago, New Zealand, and a PhD at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney investigating mechanisms of anabolic bone formation, she undertook postdoctoral research at the Stem Cell Institute at Lund University in Sweden. She entered scientific publishing in 2008 as an Associate Editor of Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology and was appointed Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Nephrology in 2009. In June 2020 she took on an expanded role as Consulting Editor for Nature, while continuing to lead the nephrology title. The Senior Editor is Ellen Carney, PhD, who joined Nature Research as an Assistant Editor in 2011, moved to Nature Reviews Nephrology as Associate Editor in 2012, and was promoted to Senior Editor in 2014. (Editorial team details as listed on the journal's official editors page.)

General editorial inquiries and correspondence are directed to the Editor at nrneph@nature.com. The correct journal abbreviation for abstracting and indexing purposes is Nat. Rev. Nephrol.

Journal Metrics

Nature Reviews Nephrology is among the most-cited journals in all of medicine. Key metrics, with sources:

• Journal Impact Factor: 46.7 — the 2025 Journal Impact Factor as reported on the Nature Portfolio journal page (checked 2026-10-03). Third-party journal databases (e.g., LetPub) place the journal at rank 1 of 134 journals in the Urology & Nephrology category (JIF quartile Q1) of the Web of Science Core Collection.
• Scopus CiteScore: not officially published on the journal's own page; third-party databases report a CiteScore of approximately 51 (recent year), with a rank of 2 of 88 in the Nephrology subcategory. Treat third-party figures as indicative rather than official.
• MEDLINE indexing: the journal is currently indexed for MEDLINE (NLM Catalog), with indexing coverage from Volume 5, Number 4 (April 2009) — the first issue under the Nature Reviews title.
• Publication volume: approximately 48 citable articles per year (third-party estimate); the journal publishes monthly in print and online.
• Sustainable Development Goals: Springer Nature reports that over 50% of the articles published in the journal in 2025 related to one or more of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Metrics should be interpreted in context: as a review-only journal, its impact factor is structurally higher than that of original-research journals, because review articles attract citations at higher rates. The figure that matters most for authors is fit — the journal seeks field-defining syntheses and expert commentary, not incremental findings.

Open Access and Publication Charges

Nature Reviews Nephrology operates on a subscription publishing model. The journal's official publishing-model statement is explicit: articles can only be published via the subscription route, the journal does not offer an immediate gold open access option, and no fee is charged for publication. Because the journal publishes non-primary content (Reviews, News & Views, Comments) rather than original research, most funder open-access mandates — which typically apply to funded primary research — do not require these articles to be published open access.

Authors retain self-archiving rights: six months after the date of online publication, authors may deposit the accepted manuscript on their personal website and in funder or institutional repositories. Copyright is retained by Springer Nature under standard licensing terms. Prospective authors with specific funder mandates should check their individual requirements before proceeding, as advised on the journal's editorial-policies page.

Abstracting and Indexing

The journal is indexed in the major biomedical and citation databases:

• MEDLINE / PubMed — currently indexed (confirmed by the NLM Catalog; coverage from April 2009).
• Web of Science — Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Urology & Nephrology category.
• Scopus — indexed, with CiteScore tracking.
• Embase — indexed (per journal indexing databases).

ISSN: 1759-5061 (print), 1759-507X (electronic). ISSN-L: 1745-8323 (linking the title's history to its predecessor).

Landmark Papers

The following highly cited articles illustrate the journal's influence. All DOIs verified via Crossref (HTTP 200):

• "The global epidemiology of hypertension" — Katherine T. Mills, Andrei Stefanescu, Jiang He. Nat. Rev. Nephrol. 2020;16:223–237. DOI: 10.1038/s41581-019-0244-2. A definitive synthesis of hypertension prevalence, awareness, treatment, and control worldwide; among the most-cited nephrology reviews of the decade (over 3,600 citations recorded by Crossref).
• "TGF-β: the master regulator of fibrosis" — Xiao-ming Meng, David J. Nikolic-Paterson, Hui Yao Lan. Nat. Rev. Nephrol. 2016;12:325–338. DOI: 10.1038/nrneph.2016.48. A landmark mechanistic review of transforming growth factor-beta signaling in renal fibrosis (over 3,400 citations).
• "Glycosylation in health and disease" — Colin Reily, Tyler J. Stewart, Matthew B. Renfrow, Jan Novak. Nat. Rev. Nephrol. 2019;15:346–366. DOI: 10.1038/s41581-019-0129-4. An authoritative review of protein glycosylation with direct relevance to IgA nephropathy and other kidney diseases (over 2,000 citations).
• "Genetics of diabetes mellitus and diabetes complications" — Joanne B. Cole, Jose C. Florez. Nat. Rev. Nephrol. 2020;16:377–390. DOI: 10.1038/s41581-020-0278-5. A comprehensive genetics review highly relevant to diabetic kidney disease (over 1,500 citations).
• "Acute kidney disease and renal recovery: consensus report of the Acute Disease Quality Initiative (ADQI) 16 Workgroup" — Lakhmir S. Chawla et al., on behalf of the ADQI 16 Workgroup. Nat. Rev. Nephrol. 2017;13:241–257. DOI: 10.1038/nrneph.2017.2. A consensus statement that helped define the concept of acute kidney disease as distinct from acute kidney injury (over 1,300 citations).

Citation counts are Crossref "is-referenced-by" counts as of October 2026 and will have changed since.

Publishing Guidance

Because content is predominantly commissioned, the most realistic route to publishing in Nature Reviews Nephrology is to be invited — or to pitch a compelling proposal. Practical guidance drawn from the journal's official pages:

• Start with a proposal, not a manuscript. The journal's "writing for us" guidance invites prospective authors to contact the editors with a proposal outlining the topic, why it is timely, and why you are the right author team. Unsolicited complete manuscripts are far less likely to succeed.
• Demonstrate authority. Reviews are commissioned from recognized leaders. A proposal should show that the authors have published primary research or clinical guidelines in the area and can offer genuine synthesis, not just summary.
• Emphasize accessibility and display items. The journal explicitly seeks articles "enhanced with clearly understandable figures, tables and other display items." Conceptual figures that distill mechanisms are a hallmark of the journal.
• Expect rigorous editorial development. Even commissioned articles undergo peer review, and the professional editors work closely with authors on structure, clarity, and accuracy. The journal publishes a summary of its editorial input and checks.
• Note the AI policy. Nature Reviews journals may use internal Springer Nature AI tools to support accessory content such as summary points — always edited and fact-checked — and any substantive AI use is declared per article.
• Contact: general editorial inquiries to nrneph@nature.com.

How Nature Reviews Nephrology Differs from Other Nephrology Journals

Understanding the journal's position in the ecosystem helps explain both its influence and its selectivity. Most leading nephrology journals — such as the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Kidney International, and the American Journal of Kidney Diseases — are primary-research journals: they publish new experiments, clinical trials, and observational studies. Nature Reviews Nephrology occupies a different niche. It does not compete for original findings; instead, it competes for interpretation. Its articles answer the question every busy clinician and scientist asks: what does this new evidence actually mean?

This positioning has several consequences. First, authorship is concentrated among established experts — writing a Nature Reviews article is often an invitation that recognizes a career's worth of contribution to a topic. Second, the articles are unusually durable: whereas a primary paper may be superseded within a few years, a well-constructed review or consensus statement can remain the standard reference for a decade, which is why the journal's most-cited papers accumulate thousands of citations. Third, the journal functions as a bridge between the laboratory and the clinic — a basic scientist reading about TGF-beta signaling and a nephrologist managing fibrotic kidney disease both find value in the same article. For trainees, the journal is frequently recommended as the fastest route to genuine literacy in a subspecialty: a single authoritative review can substitute for months of fragmented reading.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the impact factor of Nature Reviews Nephrology?
The 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 46.7, as reported on the Nature Portfolio journal page. It ranks at the top of the Urology & Nephrology category.

What are the ISSNs of Nature Reviews Nephrology?
1759-5061 (print) and 1759-507X (online). The predecessor title, Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology, used 1745-8323 and 1745-8331.

Who publishes Nature Reviews Nephrology?
Springer Nature, as part of the Nature Portfolio (Nature Reviews series). The journal is published monthly from London, UK.

Who is the Chief Editor?
Susan Allison, PhD, has been Chief Editor since the journal's 2009 relaunch; Ellen Carney, PhD, is Senior Editor. Editorial decisions are made by full-time professional editors, supported by an external advisory board.

Does Nature Reviews Nephrology publish original research?
No. It publishes Reviews, Perspectives, Consensus Statements, Comments, News & Views, and Research Highlights — non-primary content only.

Is there an article processing charge (APC)?
No. The journal uses a subscription model, offers no immediate gold open access option, and charges no publication fee. Authors may self-archive the accepted manuscript six months after online publication.

Is Nature Reviews Nephrology indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE?
Yes — it is currently indexed for MEDLINE, with coverage from April 2009 (Volume 5, Number 4).

What was the journal called before 2009?
Nature Clinical Practice Nephrology (2005–2009), led by Editor-in-Chief Robert W. Schrier, MD. Volume numbering continued uninterrupted across the rename.

How do I submit to Nature Reviews Nephrology?
Most content is commissioned. Prospective authors should send a proposal to the editors (nrneph@nature.com) following the "writing for us" guidance on nature.com/nrneph rather than submitting a full unsolicited manuscript.

What is the journal's abbreviation?
Nat. Rev. Nephrol. — the correct abbreviation for abstracting and indexing purposes.

Can I self-archive my Nature Reviews Nephrology article?
Yes — six months after online publication, authors may deposit the accepted manuscript on a personal website or in a funder/institutional repository, per the journal's official self-archiving policy.

Why is the impact factor so high compared with other nephrology journals?
As a review-only journal, it benefits structurally: review articles are cited at higher rates than original research papers. Its influence reflects genuine authority — its consensus statements and landmark reviews become standard references — but the number should not be compared directly with primary-research journals.