Article format guide: News & Views, Year in Review and Clinical

NATURE REVIEWS JOURNALS 1

Article format guide: News & Views, Year in Review and Clinical outlook

Please follow the below specifications when writing a News & Views, Year in Review or Clinical outlook article for Nature Reviews.

Manuscript file

File types

Preferred file format is Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc or .rtf), LaTeX submissions are allowed

(please discuss with the editor first) but we cannot accept PDF.

Title

Ideally maximum 69 characters (2 lines), or 103 characters (3 lines), including spaces. Abbrevi-

ations and punctuation should be avoided.

Author names

First name, middle initials (if applicable), last name; please check spelling. You may also in-

clude your name in non-Roman alphabets in parentheses after your name in English. For exam-

       Currently supported languages are: Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew,

Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Persian and Russian.

Affiliations

Department, Institution, City, State/province (if applicable), Country/Region. Please limit the

number of affiliations, where possible, and ensure affiliations are clearly linked to the correct

author.

Corresponding author

Name and email of corresponding author.

Standfirst

Standfirst of 50 words maximum, which should provide a summary of the topic.

Main text

Articles should be around 1,000 words; no headings are allowed.

References

Max. 10 references. Please use the Nature Reviews style described below.

Acknowledgements

Optional. You can find our guidelines here.

Competing interests

Include in manuscript file; you will also be asked to complete this information during submis-

sion. You can find our policy here.

Related links

Optional.

Display items

A single display item (a table, figure or box) might be allowed, but should be discussed with the editor. If allowed, you can find in-

structions on the following pages.

Year in Review articles must include a Key advances box, which includes bullet-pointed sentences that summarize the advances in the

field (one for each of the 35 highlighted articles).

Manuscript elements

Title

Abbreviations and punctuation should be avoided.

Affiliations

Our preference is to minimize the number of affiliations per

author where possible. Affiliations should be limited to prima-

ry addresses or those that must be cited for funding reasons.

Additional affiliations and/or funding information can be add-

ed to the Acknowledgements section. Each address should be a

separate affiliation. Springer Nature remains neutral with re-

gard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institution-

al affiliations.

Standfirst

Articles start with a standfirst, which should provide a short

summary of the topic.

Headings

No headings are allowed.

References

Please keep the reference list as up to date as possible and

avoid referring extensively to your own published work. Cita-

tions of personal communications should be kept to a mini-

mum and not included in the reference list; written permission

from the correspondent must be provided to the editor.

Papers in the numbered reference list must have been pub-

lished or accepted for publication by a named publication or be

available in a recognized preprint server. For in-press articles,

embargo times must be considered, and an e-mail confirming

acceptance from the editors of the original research journal

may be required. Meeting abstracts and presentations should be

etion.

References should be included as superscript numbers and

cited sequentially in the following order: main text, tables,

figures and then boxes. The numbered references should be

listed at the end of the article in the following format:

1. Author, A. B. Title of the article. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 7, 101–109 (2003).

2. Author, A. B. & Author, B. C. Title of the article. Nat. Cell Biol. 6, 123–131 (2001).

3. Author, A. B., Author, Z. X. & Author, B. C. Title of the article. EMBO J. 25, 3454–3461

(2006).

4. Author, A. B. in Title of Book (ed. Surname, I. N.) 75–98 (Publisher, 2000).

If a reference has six or more authors, only the first author

et al.

Clinical trials should be cited as a reference using the fol-

lowing format:

5. US National Library of Medicine. ClinicalTrials.gov

NATURE REVIEWS JOURNALS 2

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01939899 (2016).

Related links

but specific online articles should be cited as a reference using

the following format:

6. Author. Title of online article. Website name http address (2015).

Preprints can be cited using the following format:

7. Author, A. B., Author, Z.Y. & Author, B. C. Title of the preprint. Preprint at

http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/XXXXX (2002)

8. Author, A. B., Author, Z.Y. & Author, B. C. Title of the preprint. Preprint at bioRxiv

https://doi.org/XXX (2002)

The Nature Reviews style can be obtained for Endnote (see

http://www.endnote.com/support/enstyles.asp).

Acknowledgements (optional)

The acknowledgement section can be used to thank anyone

important in the publication of the work who does not qualify

for authorship (Authorship criteria here) and to declare funders

and grants if the publication is within the scope and directly

arises from the grant. Please refer to the Acknowledgment

guidance for more information.

Competing interests

In the interests of transparency, any competing interests must

be declared both within the text of the article and via our

web-based Manuscript Tracking System upon submission. A

detailed explanation can be found in the Nature i-

cy on competing interests.

Authors can decline to disclose their competing interests if

they are bound by confidentiality agreements, but we will pub-

lish the fact that they have declined to provide information. At

the Nature Reviews journals, competing interests will be dis-

closed to referees and will be published online and/or in print.