About the numbers on this page: Impact factor values cited below reflect the most recent JCR release indexed by our database at the time of writing. JCR values update annually; for live current values, use our homepage search tool.
Nature Impact Factor 2025
Nature is one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals, consistently ranking in the top tier of academic publications.
Compare Nature with Other Top Journals
Nature
Cell
Science
PNAS
Nature Family Journals Impact Factors
Popular Nature Journals (2025)
About Nature Journal
Journal Overview
- Publisher: Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature)
- Founded: 1869
- Frequency: Weekly
- ISSN: 0028-0836 (Print), 1476-4687 (Online)
- Subject Areas: Multidisciplinary Sciences
- Language: English
Why Nature Has High Impact
- • Publishes groundbreaking research across all scientific disciplines
- • Rigorous peer review process with high rejection rate
- • Global readership and high citation rates
- • Historical significance and established reputation
- • Attracts Nobel Prize-winning research
- • Broad interdisciplinary appeal
An Editorial Perspective on Nature
The impact factor number by itself tells you very little about whether your paper belongs in Nature. When I was moving between clinical work and AI research, I spent a lot of time reading Nature cover-to-cover to understand what actually makes the cut. A few honest observations that I wish I'd had earlier:
The number is driven by a small number of very heavily cited papers.
Like most high-IF venues, Nature's impact factor is skewed by a handful of papers that accumulate thousands of citations. Median citations per Nature paper are far lower than the IF suggests. Don't assume your paper will receive impact-factor-equivalent attention simply because it is published there.
The editorial filter is stricter than the review filter.
Most papers sent to Nature are rejected without external review. The professional editors make that call based on whether the claim is broad enough and the evidence surprising enough. If your paper is primarily a careful extension of prior work, it is unlikely to pass this gate no matter how rigorous the methodology.
Revisions are substantial, not cosmetic.
If your paper is sent out for review and survives the first round, expect to run additional experiments — often months of work — in response to reviewer requests. Budget time and resources for this before submitting.
A Nature-family specialty journal is often the right answer.
Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Nature Biotechnology, and similar specialty titles have their own very strong impact factors and are a better fit for most high-quality specialist work. The review process is typically more conventional, and your paper will be read by people who actually work in your subfield.
When a Nature Submission Makes Sense
A Nature submission is worth considering when your manuscript satisfies all of the following:
- The central finding would be interesting to a reader outside your specialty.
- There is a specific, crisp claim — not a catalog of observations or a comprehensive survey.
- The evidence is overdetermined. Multiple independent lines of evidence should point to the same conclusion.
- There is a plausible "so what" that extends beyond the immediate field — therapeutic implication, new methodology applicable elsewhere, or a challenge to a prevailing model.
- You are prepared for a four-to-nine month review cycle, potentially with substantial additional experiments, and for a reasonable probability of rejection at any stage.
If two or more of these are weak, a specialty Nature-family journal or a strong discipline-specific venue is usually the better bet.
A note on year-over-year values
Nature's JCR impact factor has historically fluctuated within a narrow band. The current headline number (64.8) reflects the most recent JCR release that our dataset indexes. We deliberately do not publish a fabricated multi-year trend line, because small year-over-year swings in IF rarely indicate anything meaningful about journal quality — they are mostly artifacts of which citable items happen to fall inside the two-year window. If you want real longitudinal data, consult Journal Citation Reports directly.
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Find impact factors for thousands of journals across all disciplines. Search by journal name, compare impact factors, and discover JCR quartiles.
Written by Dr. Meng Zhao
Physician-Scientist · Founder, LabCat AI
MD · Former Neurosurgeon · Medical AI Researcher
Dr. Meng Zhao is a former neurosurgeon turned medical-AI researcher. After years in the operating room, he moved into applied AI for clinical workflows and now leads LabCat AI, a medical-AI company working on decision support and research tooling for clinicians. He built Journal Metrics as a free resource for researchers who need reliable journal metrics without paid database subscriptions.