(20 February 2003)
Prospective authors should read our author's guide before submitting their papers, which will be beneficial. The new guide emphasizes the necessity and opportunity to communicate with important non-professional readers more effectively.
Editors of Nature magazine often receive letters from aspiring authors, eager to publish their papers. They say that papers are important for their money, position or other wishes. The scientific professional organizations to which these authors belong excessively base the reward system on quantitative evaluation, such as the number of papers published, especially in journals with special influence.
These extensive functions of the most important journals increase their weight in the author's mind. The author is used to writing for scientists in his field. They will delve into the part of the paper that tells the method word by word, but they have no patience to guess the possible significance of the research results. Publishing papers in the most important journals also requires the author to try his best to communicate with a wider audience, not just with his closest peers.
To contribute to international academic journals, the author must also consider the second kind of readers: scientists outside the discipline. Scientists read papers outside the discipline for some reasons: for example, they are interested in science and technology; Or apply new technologies or observation methods to their own systems; Or use the weapons of their disciplines in the scientific challenges under discussion. For a long time, Nature has guided the author in this way. During the process from the highly technical manuscript to publication, it has been revised to make it more readable. However, if the authors give their papers to researchers with different professional backgrounds before submitting them, they can do more from the beginning.
Nature also provides other help for researchers. Through the new online submission system, the processing of papers is more effective and transparent, and authors can track their papers throughout the review process. We have also revised the author's guide of Nature magazine to advise the author more clearly on how to write a paper. Today, we strongly encourage authors to clearly explain the contribution of each co-author and what they have done at the end of the paper, and ensure that each co-author signs and agrees with the basic requirements of Nature: data availability and material enjoyment.
In addition, Nature also invited authors to help show their research results to different readers. Nowadays, Nature requires authors to write two abstracts when submitting their papers: one for scientists and editors, and the other for the author to remind the public of the importance of their research results. Nature will use this to show and promote its published papers.
Researchers are increasingly aware of their responsibility to a wider audience, not just the media, but more scientific and interesting people. When science is misinterpreted or suppressed, researchers should not sit idly by and let the media do all the work for them. The role of Nature magazine is to publish the most innovative and influential papers that scientists can do and show these achievements to the public. However, researchers also have the responsibility to actively and mainly exchange their knowledge and uncertainty to avoid being misunderstood, and sometimes even pass on scientific information through hard struggle. Nature will, as always, provide a media platform for the authors of the papers, so that they can take these opportunities for granted.
You submitted the materials they reviewed in the past. If you can write back and tell me that you can publish them, you can ~ come on! Wish you success!