Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Nature Reviews Neuroscience — Journal Profile

Overview

Nature Reviews Neuroscience (Nat. Rev. Neurosci.) is a monthly review journal published by Springer Nature as part of the Nature Portfolio's Nature Reviews family. It is widely regarded as the leading dedicated review journal in the neurosciences. Unlike primary-research journals such as Nature Neuroscience or Neuron, it does not publish original experimental findings. Instead, each article synthesizes and critically evaluates recent progress in brain and nervous system research, offering scientists a single authoritative entry point into fast-moving areas of the field.

The journal's coverage is deliberately broad. Its subject range runs from the molecular and cellular machinery of neuronal development and function, through systems, circuits and computational approaches, all the way to behavior, cognition and neurological and psychiatric disorders. The publisher describes this breadth — roughly "from molecules to mind" — as one of the journal's defining features, and it is the reason the publication attracts readers from virtually every corner of an ever-expanding discipline.

All editorial decisions are made in-house by a team of full-time professional editors who are themselves PhD-level scientists; the journal has no external editorial board. Its editorial office is based in London, UK, and the journal has been led since February 2011 by Chief Editor Darran Yates. In the 2025 Journal Citation Reports, Nature Reviews Neuroscience received a Journal Impact Factor of 29.0, placing it among the most-cited journals in neuroscience.

The journal's reputation rests on two pillars: selectivity of authorship and intensity of editorial development. Because articles are commissioned rather than submitted at random, the author list reads as a who's-who of the field, and because each manuscript is scientifically edited, peer reviewed, copy-edited and professionally illustrated by the in-house art team, the finished articles are unusually readable for specialist work. The publisher reports more than 2.8 million article downloads in 2025 alone, a figure that reflects the journal's function as teaching and orientation material — its reviews are routinely assigned in graduate courses and cited as the definitive entry point to a topic. Themed collections on subjects such as Alzheimer's disease, network science, the 3D genome and Nobel-prize-winning discoveries further reinforce its role as a curated record of where the discipline has been and where it is heading.

History

Nature Reviews Neuroscience was launched in 2000, in the early wave of the Nature Reviews portfolio that followed the success of the Nature Reviews concept: filter journals that identify, commission and rigorously edit review content rather than relying on unsolicited submissions. The October 2020 issue was dedicated to the journal's 20th anniversary, marking two decades since its launch.

The journal appeared at a moment when neuroscience was becoming, in the journal's own account, the archetypal multidisciplinary science — an explosion of techniques and theoretical approaches in molecular, developmental and cognitive neuroscience was generating knowledge faster than any individual researcher could track. A dedicated review venue was needed to organize and communicate that information efficiently, and Nature Reviews Neuroscience was created to be the first port of call for scientists interested in any aspect of the field.

Key milestones include:

• 2000 — Journal launched as part of the Nature Reviews portfolio (the October 2020 issue marked the 20th anniversary).
• February 2011 — Darran Yates became Chief Editor, a role he continues to hold; he had joined the Nature Reviews family as an Associate Editor on Nature Reviews Neurology in February 2009.
• 2020 — 20th-anniversary collection published, reflecting on two decades of neuroscience coverage.
• 2025–2026 — Journal metrics for 2025 show a Journal Impact Factor of 29.0 and more than 2.8 million article downloads in a single year, with Volume 27 published in 2026.

Over its run the journal has curated thematic collections on subjects ranging from Alzheimer's disease and the 3D genome to Nobel-prize-winning discoveries in physiology or medicine, cementing its role as a record of the field's most consequential ideas.

Aims & Scope (paraphrased from the journal's official statement)

The journal states that it is interested in the strongest research from across the entire spectrum of neuroscience, and that its broad scope is designed to give published work the widest possible readership. Paraphrasing its official aims:

• Breadth: coverage spans the full modern neuroscience landscape, from molecules, cells and circuits to systems, cognition and brain disorders.
• Authority: articles are meant to be authoritative, accessible, topical and engaging — written so that a specialist in one subfield can understand and benefit from a review in another.
• Timeliness: the journal commissions leading researchers to write on the timeliest issues, filtering a flood of literature to highlight what matters most.
• Audience: the content is aimed at neuroscientists in academia, clinical research and industry, as well as scientists in adjacent disciplines who need a reliable synthesis of unfamiliar territory.

Neuroscience's multidisciplinary character — drawing on genetics, biophysics, engineering, psychology, medicine and increasingly computation — is treated not as a complication but as the journal's core subject matter.

Editorial Team

Nature Reviews Neuroscience follows the Nature Portfolio model of professional, in-house editing: there is no external editorial board, and every editorial decision is taken by full-time editors with doctoral-level scientific training. The current leadership, as published on the journal's official editors page, includes:

• Chief Editor — Darran Yates, PhD (Springer Nature, UK). Yates earned his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Bath, working on glutamate-gated chloride channels in nematodes. In 2003 he moved to the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London for postdoctoral research — first on the assembly and axonal transport of neurofilaments, then on binding partners of the amyloid precursor protein. He joined Nature Reviews Neurology as an Associate Editor in February 2009 and became Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Neuroscience in February 2011. His editorial interests center on molecular and cellular neuroscience, and he is based in London.
• Senior Editor — Katherine Whalley, PhD (Springer Nature, UK). Whalley earned her doctorate from the Institute of Child Health at University College London, researching factors that determine regenerative capacity in the developing spinal cord, and worked in industry at Eli Lilly on neuroprotective compounds for Parkinson's disease. She joined the Nature Reviews team in January 2006, progressing from Associate Editor to Senior Editor on Nature Reviews Neuroscience, with a focus on developmental, molecular and cellular neuroscience. (Note: staff rosters can change; the Chief Editor listing above is the current headline editorship.)

Supporting production roles published on the journal's official credits page include Senior Art Editor Jennie Vallis, Production Editor Laura Brierley, Sub Editor Team Leader Rachel Jones, Managing Editor Christian Harding, Art Director Samantha Whitham, Creative Director Kelly Krause, Editorial Director Kim Baumann, Publishing Director (Nature Journals) Ruth Wilson, Vice President (Journals, Nature) Deborah Sweet, and Editor-in-Chief of the Nature journals Magdalena Skipper.

General editorial correspondence is handled at nrn@nature.com; the journal's editors page notes that all editorial decisions are made by the in-house team.

Review Process

Because Nature Reviews Neuroscience publishes only non-primary content — reviews, perspectives, comments and related formats — its workflow differs from that of original-research journals. No published article contains previously unpublished data; new analyses of existing data may occasionally appear to support a narrative, but they are minimal and never the article's focus.

The process, as described in the journal's "Writing for Nature Reviews" guidance and its editorial-input summary, works roughly as follows:

1. Commissioning. Most content is commissioned. In-house editors identify timely topics and invite recognized experts to write on them, helping the author shape the scope of the article from the outset.
2. Synopsis and draft development. The handling editor provides detailed feedback on the article synopsis and the first draft so the manuscript is well prepared before external assessment.
3. Peer review. Review-type articles (Reviews, Perspectives, Consensus Statements and similar) are formally peer reviewed. The editor selects expert referees, and the author is supported through any revision process with tailored editorial guidance.
4. Editing and artwork. Accepted manuscripts are thoroughly and sensitively edited for scientific accuracy, clarity and accessibility. An in-house art team works with the author to produce professional-quality figures, redrawing schematics to the journal's standards.
5. Production. Text and figures are carefully copy-edited and formatted; proofs are checked and approved by both the author and the editor before publication.

All review-type articles pass ethics and policy checks including plagiarism screening, competing-interest declarations, patient-consent and clinical-trial-registration checks where applicable, verification of references to unpublished work, and author-identification procedures. Short-form news and comment content is developed, researched and written in-house by the editorial team itself.

The journal reports a median of 17 days from submission to first editorial decision and 152 days from submission to acceptance (official 2025 journal metrics). An acceptance rate is not publicly disclosed.

Impact & Metrics

Springer Nature publishes a dedicated journal-metrics page for Nature Reviews Neuroscience, and the figures below are taken from it. Note that Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA): it cautions that citation measures such as the two-year Journal Impact Factor can be skewed by small numbers of highly cited articles, and encourages readers and authors to consider a range of metrics rather than any single number.

The most recent Journal Citation Reports release (June 2026) reports the 2025 impact factor. Readers should treat third-party sites that quote different or conflicting figures — for example, varying CiteScore or h-index values across aggregator sites — with caution; the figures above are the ones the publisher itself reports.

Submission Guidelines

Because the journal is commission-based, there is no conventional "submit your manuscript" route for unsolicited full-length reviews. The journal's official "For Authors" guidance is framed around the commissioned workflow:

• Commissioning first: most articles begin with an invitation from an in-house editor, who works with the author to define a timely, insightful scope for the piece.
• Synopsis: invited authors typically develop a synopsis for detailed editorial feedback before writing the full draft.
• Draft and revision: the editor provides feedback on the draft, selects expert peer reviewers, and supports the author through revisions.
• Editorial policies: authors must follow the journal's editorial policies on competing interests, authorship, plagiarism, image integrity and the use of AI tools. The journal notes that authorship should be agreed with the editor at the commissioning stage, and that it reserves the right not to consider manuscripts with contributions from medical or science writers.
• AI use: the Nature Reviews journals disclose that internal Springer Nature-developed AI tools are occasionally used to support accessory content such as summary points; this material is always edited and fact-checked by authors and/or editors, and any substantive AI use beyond accessory content is declared on an individual article basis.

Researchers who believe they have a timely review topic are advised to contact the editors (nrn@nature.com) with a proposal rather than submitting a complete unsolicited manuscript. Full author guidance is available on the journal's official "For Authors" page at nature.com.

Article Processing Charges & Open Access

No article processing charge (APC) figure is published on the journal's official nature.com pages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience is primarily a subscription journal: readers access content via individual subscriptions (including the Nature+ digital subscription, listed at $32.99 per 30 days) or institutional licenses arranged through the Springer Nature licensing team. The official site provides contact routes for institutional access, advertising and marketing rather than an APC schedule. Accordingly, any APC figure quoted by third-party aggregator sites should not be treated as publisher-confirmed; the official position is that APC costs are not publicly disclosed on the journal's own pages.

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Nature Reviews Neuroscience?
   It is a monthly review journal in the Nature Portfolio, published by Springer Nature. It publishes commissioned Review, Perspective and Comment articles that synthesize recent advances across neuroscience, rather than original experimental research.
2. Who publishes Nature Reviews Neuroscience?
   Springer Nature, as part of the Nature Reviews portfolio of journals.
3. When was the journal founded?
   The journal was launched in 2000; its October 2020 issue celebrated the 20th anniversary.
4. What is the journal's impact factor?
   Its 2025 Journal Impact Factor is 29.0, with a 5-year impact factor of 38.0, as reported on the publisher's official journal-metrics page (figures from the Journal Citation Reports).
5. Who is the Chief Editor?
   Darran Yates, PhD, has been Chief Editor since February 2011. He earned his doctorate in neuroscience at the University of Bath and carried out postdoctoral research at King's College London before joining the Nature Reviews editorial team.
6. Does the journal publish original research?
   No. It publishes only non-primary content: no article includes previously unpublished data. New analyses of existing data may occasionally support a narrative review but are never the main focus.
7. How are articles commissioned?
   Most content is commissioned: in-house editors identify timely topics and invite recognized experts to write, then work with them on the synopsis, scope and draft before peer review.
8. Are the review articles peer reviewed?
   Yes. All review-type articles undergo formal peer review by expert referees selected by the handling editor, alongside scientific editing, artwork development and ethics checks.
9. What are the journal's ISSNs and abbreviation?
   Print ISSN 1471-003X, online ISSN 1471-0048; the standard abbreviation for abstracting and indexing is Nat. Rev. Neurosci.
10. Is the journal open access, and what is the APC?
    The journal is primarily subscription-based; no APC figure is published on its official pages, so APC costs are not publicly disclosed there.
11. What topics does it cover?
    The full spectrum of modern neuroscience: molecular and cellular neurobiology, neuronal development, circuits and systems, computational approaches, behavior and cognition, and neurological and psychiatric disorders.
12. How can I read or subscribe to the journal?
    Through individual subscriptions (including the Nature+ digital option) or institutional licenses; the journal's official site provides subscription and institutional-access contact details.

Profile compiled from the journal's official nature.com pages (accessed October 2026). Metrics reflect the 2025 Journal Citation Reports as reported by the publisher. Staff listings and figures should be checked against the live official site, as editorial teams and metrics are updated periodically.