Nature Reviews Neurology

About Nature Reviews Neurology

Nature Reviews Neurology: An In-Depth Journal Profile

Nature Reviews Neurology (Nat. Rev. Neurol.) is a monthly peer-reviewed review journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) in the United Kingdom. It is one of the most cited journals in clinical neurology, publishing authoritative Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views, Research Highlights and Consensus Statements that span the full breadth of neurology — from neurodegeneration and stroke to epilepsy, neuroimmunology, headache, sleep and neuromuscular disease. With a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 31.2 reported on the journal's official metrics page, it consistently ranks among the top two or three journals in its field and serves as a primary reading destination for neurologists, neuroscientists and clinicians who need reliable, expertly curated syntheses of fast-moving science.

Unlike primary-research journals, Nature Reviews Neurology does not publish original research articles. Its content is written by internationally recognized clinical academics and researchers and is shaped by a team of full-time professional editors with doctoral-level qualifications. This profile brings together the journal's history, scope, editorial leadership, independently verified metrics, publishing model, landmark papers and practical submission guidance — every fact below is traceable to an official source listed at the end.

History: From Nature Clinical Practice Neurology to a Flagship Reviews Title

Nature Reviews Neurology was established in 2005 under the title Nature Clinical Practice Neurology, part of Nature Publishing Group's clinical-practice journal family. In April 2009 the title was rebranded as Nature Reviews Neurology — the U.S. National Library of Medicine catalog records the new title as beginning with volume 5, number 4 (April 2009), continuing Nature Clinical Practice Neurology. The rebranding aligned the journal with the wider Nature Reviews portfolio, whose titles share a common editorial philosophy: in-depth, authoritative reviews written for both specialists and the broader medical community.

Heather Wood, PhD, provides a direct thread of continuity across that transition. She became Editor of Nature Clinical Practice Neurology in 2005, and her title changed to Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Neurology following the 2009 rebranding. She led the journal for nearly two decades before stepping back from the chief-editor role in August 2023, remaining on the journal as a Senior Editor. Ian Fyfe, PhD — a Cambridge-trained neuroscientist who joined the Nature Reviews Neurology editorial team in 2014 and later served as locum Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology — was appointed Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Neurology in August 2023.

In 2025 the journal marked its 20th anniversary, using the milestone to publish a series of regional reflections — "Neurology in 2025" — in which leaders of neurological societies across Africa, Europe, Latin America, Asia and Oceania, the USA and the Arab region assessed two decades of progress and the challenges ahead. The anniversary underscores how the journal has grown from a clinical-practice spin-off into a venue whose consensus statements and reviews routinely shape clinical guidelines and research agendas worldwide.

Aims and Scope

According to its official aims and scope statement, Nature Reviews Neurology aims to be the premier source of reviews and commentaries for the scientific and clinical communities it serves. The journal sets out to publish articles that are authoritative and accessible, supported by clearly understandable figures, tables and other display items, and to provide an outstanding service to authors, referees and readers so that each article is as useful and impactful as possible.

The journal's scope is deliberately broad. It covers the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease or impaired function of the central and peripheral nervous systems, including neurodevelopmental, neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. Official subject coverage includes:

• Ageing and dementia
• Brain imaging
• Epilepsy
• Ethics
• Genetics
• Headache
• Infectious disease
• Injury, repair and rehabilitation
• Movement disorders
• Neural tube defects
• Neurodegenerative disease
• Neuroimmunology and neuroinflammation
• Neurometabolic disorders
• Neuromuscular disease
• Neuro-oncology
• Neuropsychiatric disorders
• Neurosurgery
• Public health
• Pain
• Peripheral neuropathies
• Prion disease
• Sensory systems
• Sleep
• Stroke
• White matter disease, including demyelinating and dysmyelinating disorders

Article types published by the journal include in-depth Reviews, which place a topic in the context of its history and development; Perspectives and News & Views, which offer topical discussion and opinion; Comments; Consensus Statements, which distil expert agreement on contested or fast-moving questions; and Research Highlights, in which the editors filter notable primary research from specialty and general medical journals. The journal's clinical content is written by internationally renowned clinical academics and researchers and is targeted at readers in the medical sciences from postgraduate level upward — but the editors explicitly aim to make articles accessible to readers working in any medical discipline, so that a stroke specialist can profitably read a review on neuroimmunology and vice versa.

An important practical point follows from this editorial model: most of the journal's long-form content is commissioned by the editors rather than submitted spontaneously. Researchers who believe they have a review, perspective or consensus topic suited to the journal are expected to contact the editorial team first — details are given in the submission section below — rather than submitting a finished manuscript unsolicited.

Editorial Leadership

All editorial decisions at Nature Reviews Neurology are made by a team of full-time professional editors with PhD-level qualifications, in line with the standard Nature Reviews model in which in-house editors — rather than an external academic editor-in-chief — commission content, manage peer review and shape each article. The current leadership, as listed on the journal's official "About the Editors" page, is:

• Chief Editor — Ian Fyfe, PhD (Springer Nature, UK). Fyfe earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he studied the assembly of membrane protein complexes involved in synaptic vesicle release and membrane transport, following a first-class degree in Natural Sciences specializing in neuroscience. After several years writing for science, news and consumer publications, he joined Nature Reviews in 2014 and worked on the Nature Reviews Neurology team until becoming locum Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology in September 2022. He was appointed Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Neurology in August 2023.
• Senior Editor — Heather Wood, PhD (Springer Nature, UK). Wood obtained her PhD in transplantation biology from the University of Cambridge in 1992 and undertook postdoctoral research at Oxford and the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre in London. She joined Nature Reviews Neuroscience as an Associate Editor in 2000, became Editor of Nature Clinical Practice Neurology in 2005, and served as Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Neurology from the 2009 rebranding until August 2023.

The journal's general editorial correspondence address is nrneuro@nature.com. Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), and the journal's metrics page explicitly cautions that citation measures are not necessarily measures of journal quality — a stance that shapes how the editors present the journal's own impressive numbers.

Journal Metrics (Official, 2025)

The following metrics are published on the journal's official Journal Metrics page (nature.com) and refer to the 2025 Journal Citation Reports / metric year unless noted:

For historical context, the journal's 2021 Journal Impact Factor was 44.711, which ranked it 2nd of 212 journals in the "Clinical Neurology" category of the Journal Citation Reports. Impact factors move from year to year as citation windows roll; the 2025 figure of 31.2 still places the journal firmly in the top tier of neurology titles. Independent bibliometric records corroborate the journal's influence: OpenAlex records 3,467 works and 253,600 citations for the journal with an h-index of 273 (retrieved October 2026; OpenAlex metrics differ methodologically from Clarivate and Scopus figures).

Bibliographic identifiers: print ISSN 1759-4758, online ISSN 1759-4766 (confirmed by both nature.com and the NLM Catalog); ISO-style abbreviation Nat. Rev. Neurol.; MEDLINE abbreviation Nat Rev Neurol; CODEN NRNACP.

Open Access and Publication Charges

Nature Reviews Neurology operates on a subscription publishing model, and its official publishing-model page states the position plainly: articles in Nature Reviews can only be published via the subscription route, there is no immediate gold open-access option, and the journal does not charge any fee for publication — there is no article processing charge (APC). This distinguishes it from most hybrid journals in neurology, where authors pay to make individual articles open.

The rationale given by the publisher is that Nature Reviews titles publish only non-primary articles — Reviews, News & Views and Comment pieces — which do not contain original, previously unpublished research findings. Because most funders with open-access mandates require only primary research to be published open access, most authors do not need to take action to make review articles openly accessible. In addition, six months after online publication, authors may self-archive the accepted manuscript on a personal website or in a funder or institutional repository. Authors who agreed to write for a Nature Reviews journal accept the publisher's standard licensing and self-archiving terms. Authors with unusual funder requirements should check their individual mandates before proceeding, but the headline fact for prospective authors is simple: there are no publication fees of any kind.

Abstracting and Indexing

The journal is indexed in the major biomedical and citation databases. The U.S. National Library of Medicine catalog lists its current MEDLINE indexing status as active, under the MEDLINE title abbreviation Nat Rev Neurol, which means its articles are searchable in PubMed. Its presence in the Journal Citation Reports (Impact Factor 31.2 for 2025) confirms indexing in the Web of Science Core Collection, and its SNIP (4.542) and SJR (7.083) values confirm coverage in Scopus. Third-party journal listings additionally report indexing in Embase and the Science Citation Index Expanded. Authors can therefore expect articles to be discoverable through PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus — the three discovery channels most institutions and funders require.

Landmark Papers

The following highly cited papers illustrate the journal's role as the venue where the neurology community consolidates and debates major advances. Citation counts are from OpenAlex (October 2026); every DOI below was verified to resolve at doi.org during research:

1. Apolipoprotein E and Alzheimer disease: risk, mechanisms and therapy — Liu C.-C., Kanekiyo T., Xu H. et al. (2013). A definitive synthesis of how APOE genotype shapes Alzheimer risk and a roadmap for APOE-targeted therapy; cited over 3,400 times. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2012.263
2. Ageing as a risk factor for neurodegenerative disease — Hou Y. et al. (2019). A wide-ranging review of the molecular hallmarks of ageing as they intersect with neurodegeneration; cited over 3,200 times. doi:10.1038/s41582-019-0244-7
3. Neuroinflammation and microglial activation in Alzheimer disease: where do we go from here? — Leng F., Edison P. (2020). A critical appraisal of the neuroinflammation hypothesis and its therapeutic implications; cited over 3,100 times. doi:10.1038/s41582-020-00435-y
4. Blood–brain barrier breakdown in Alzheimer disease and other neurodegenerative disorders — Sweeney M.D., Sagare A.P., Zloković B.V. (2018). An influential account of vascular contributions to neurodegeneration; cited over 3,000 times. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2017.188
5. The role of inflammation in epilepsy — Vezzani A., French J., Bartfai T., Baram T.Z. (2010). A landmark review that helped establish neuroinflammation as a therapeutic target in epilepsy; cited over 1,800 times. doi:10.1038/nrneurol.2010.178

Beyond individual papers, the journal's Consensus Statements — expert agreements on contested topics such as diagnostic criteria and treatment frameworks — are among its most policy-relevant outputs and are frequently cited in clinical guidelines. This guideline-adjacent role is worth understanding: because the journal's reviews are commissioned from recognized authorities and subjected to rigorous peer review by professional editors, guideline committees treat its consensus outputs as pre-vetted evidence syntheses. For authors, this means a well-executed Consensus Statement or comprehensive Review in Nature Reviews Neurology can influence practice more directly than a primary-research paper in a higher-volume journal — citations here convert into clinical recommendations, teaching curricula and policy documents at an unusually high rate.

Submitting to Nature Reviews Neurology

Because Nature Reviews Neurology publishes commissioned reviews and commentary rather than unsolicited primary research, the route to publication differs from a standard research journal:

• Pitch before writing. The editors commission most content. If you have an idea for a Review, Perspective, Comment or Consensus Statement, contact the editorial team with a concise proposal outlining the topic, why it is timely, the intended authors and competing coverage elsewhere.
• Editorial contact. General editorial inquiries and correspondence should be addressed to the Editor at nrneuro@nature.com; manuscript-status inquiries go to the Editorial Assistant at the same address.
• Authorship. The journal's clinical content is written by internationally renowned clinical academics and researchers. Proposals carry most weight when the proposed authors are recognized authorities with a track record in the topic.
• Accessibility. Articles must be intelligible to readers across medical disciplines, not only subspecialists. Clear figures and tables are an explicit editorial priority.
• No fees, no OA option. There is no article processing charge and no gold open-access route; accepted-manuscript self-archiving is permitted after six months.
• Ethics and AI. The journal notes that accessory content such as summary points may be drafted with internal Springer Nature AI tools but is always edited and fact-checked by authors or editors; any substantive AI use is declared per article.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the impact factor of Nature Reviews Neurology?

The official Journal Impact Factor is 31.2 for 2025, with a 5-year Impact Factor of 40.0, as published on the journal's metrics page (nature.com). The 2021 figure was 44.711, ranking 2nd of 212 journals in Clinical Neurology.

Who is the editor of Nature Reviews Neurology?

The Chief Editor is Ian Fyfe, PhD, appointed in August 2023. He is supported by Senior Editor Heather Wood, PhD, who led the journal as Chief Editor from 2009 to 2023. Editorial decisions are made by full-time professional editors employed by Springer Nature.

What are the ISSNs of Nature Reviews Neurology?

Print ISSN 1759-4758 and online ISSN 1759-4766, confirmed by nature.com and the NLM Catalog.

Does Nature Reviews Neurology charge an article processing fee?

No. The journal's official publishing-model page states that no fee is charged for publication and no immediate gold open-access option is offered. Authors may self-archive the accepted manuscript after six months.

Does the journal publish original research?

No. It publishes Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views, Research Highlights and Consensus Statements — all non-primary content. Original research findings belong in primary-research journals.

Is Nature Reviews Neurology indexed in PubMed?

Yes. The NLM Catalog lists it as currently indexed for MEDLINE (abbreviation Nat Rev Neurol), so its articles appear in PubMed. It is also covered by Web of Science and Scopus.

How do I propose an article?

Contact the editorial team at nrneuro@nature.com with a proposal before writing. Most long-form content is commissioned by the editors.

Sources

• Journal Metrics page, Nature Reviews Neurology (nature.com) — 2025 JIF 31.2, 5-year JIF 40.0, Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor, Article Influence Score, SNIP, SJR, downloads, Altmetric
• Journal Information page (nature.com) — aims summary, ISSNs 1759-4758/1759-4766, abbreviation, editorial model, contact
• Aims & Scope page (nature.com) — full scope statement and subject list
• About the Editors page (nature.com) — Ian Fyfe appointment August 2023, Heather Wood history
• Publishing model page (nature.com) — subscription-only, no APC, no gold OA, 6-month self-archiving
• NLM Catalog (NCBI) — title history from April 2009, ISSNs, MEDLINE indexing status, publisher
• "20 years of Nature Reviews Neurology" (nature.com, 2025) — anniversary and regional reflections series
• OpenAlex source record — works, citations, h-index; top-cited works used for landmark papers
• doi.org — verification that all listed DOIs resolve