Journal Author Guidesreputable journals' Instructions-for-Authors

Instructions for Authors — Scientific Reports

Source: http://www.nature.com/srep/author-instructions

For authors

At Scientific Reports we want to make the process of submitting your manuscript as simple as possible. Please carefully follow our step-by-step process, completing each step before progressing to the next.

Step 1: Before you submit

There are several important things you need to know and understand before you begin the submission process. From checking that your research is relevant to our journal, to preparing your manuscript and finding out about costs and funding, you will find it in this section.

To go straight to this step, please visit our before you submit page.

Step 2: Ready to submit

Completing our submission checklist before submitting your manuscript will help ensure that you have done everything you need to do and help to prevent delays to the assessment of your manuscript. Once you have successfully completed it, you will be ready to submit your manuscript.

To go straight to this step, please visit our ready to submit page.

After your manuscript is submitted via our online submission system, it enters our editorial process. We aim to get our first decision to you within 45 days.

Step 3: Articles in Press

Once formally accepted the article is published immediately as an Article in Press. An Article in Press is an early access version of an accepted manuscript, allowing research to be accessible earlier to readers. It may be subject to further editing, as errors affecting the content may be discovered during the final production process. These files have undergone enhancements after acceptance but are not yet the Version of Record (VOR).

This version of your manuscript will be watermarked and all legal disclaimers relating to the journal apply. Please find information related to these policies within the author submission guidelines. All fully Open Access journals will provide this service on every accepted manuscript. If you are organising a press release for your accepted manuscript, please contact your production editor.

Corrections and amendments will not be made to the Article in Press as the accepted manuscript will still go through the proofing process where these items can be addressed.

You can read more about Articles in Press here.

Step 4: Post-publication

Our marketing and communications teams promote articles across multiple channels following publication. We have a pre-publicity policy for authors, and we also offer advice and guidance to help you promote your published article through your own channels and techniques.

To go straight to this step, please visit our post-publication page.

Submission guidelines

Format of articles

Scientific Reports publishes original research in two formats: Article and Registered Report. For Registered Reports, see section below. In most cases, we do not impose strict limits on word count or page number. However, we strongly recommend that you write concisely and stick to the following guidelines:

For a definitive list of which limits are mandatory please visit the submission checklist page.

Abstract

Please do not include any references in your Abstract. Make sure it serves both as a general introduction to the topic and as a brief, non-technical summary of the main results and their implications. Abstract should be unstructured, i.e. should not contain sections or subheadings.

Scientific Reports does not support graphical abstracts.

Keywords

We allow the use of up to 6 keywords/key phrases that can be used for indexing purposes. These should represent the main content of the submission.

Manuscript

Your manuscript text file should start with a title page that shows author affiliations and contact information, identifying the corresponding author with an asterisk. We recommend that each section includes an introduction of referenced text that expands on the background of the work. Some overlap with the Abstract is acceptable.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript. In response to emerging information, advice, guidance and policy around artificial intelligence (AI), we have created a dedicated AI section in our Editorial Policy page. Please familiarize yourself with this content and comply with relevant policies.

For the main body of the text, there are no specific requirements. You can organise it in a way that best suits your research. However, the following structure will be suitable in many cases:

You should then follow the main body of text with:

Please note, footnotes should not be used.

We do not automatically include page or line numbers in the materials sent to Editorial Board Members and reviewers. Please consider including those in your manuscript; this can help facilitate the evaluation of the paper and makes giving feedback on specific sections easier.

You may include a limited number of uncaptioned molecular structure graphics and numbered mathematical equations if necessary. Display items are limited to 8 (figures and/or tables). However, to enable typesetting of papers, we advise making the number of display items commensurate with your overall word length. So, for Articles of 2,000 words or less, we suggest including no more than 4 figures/tables. Please note that schemes should not be used and should be presented as figures instead.

Your submission must also include:

For first submissions (i.e. not revised manuscripts), you may incorporate the manuscript text and figures into a single file up to 3 MB in size. Whilst Microsoft Word is preferred we also accept LaTeX, or PDF format. Figures can be inserted in the text at the appropriate positions, or grouped at the end.

Supplementary information should be combined and supplied as a single separate file, preferably in PDF format.

A submission template is available in the Overleaf template gallery to help you prepare a LaTeX manuscript within the Scientific Reports formatting criteria.

Cover letter

In your cover letter, you should include:

Finally, you should state whether you have had any prior discussions with a Scientific Reports Editorial Board Member about the work described in your manuscript.

Revised manuscripts

For revised manuscripts, you should provide all textual content in a single file, prepared using either Microsoft Word or LaTeX. Please note, we do not accept PDF files for the article text of revised manuscripts. Make sure you:

If you do not wish to incorporate the manuscript text and figures into a single file, please provide all textual content in a separate single file, prepared using either Microsoft Word or LaTeX.

TeX/LaTeX files

If you’re submitting LaTeX files, you can either use the standard ‘Article’ document class (or similar) or the wlscirep.cls file and template provided by Overleaf. For graphics, we recommend your use graphicx.sty. Use numerical references only for citations.

Our system cannot accept .bib files. If you prepare references using BibTeX (which is optional), please include the .bbl file with your submission (as a ‘LaTeX supplementary file’) in order for it to be processed correctly; this file is included automatically in the zip file generated by Overleaf for submissions. Please see this help article on Overleaf for more details.

Alternatively, you can make sure that the references (source code) are included within the manuscript file itself. As a final precaution, you should ensure that the complete .tex file compiles successfully on its own system with no errors or warnings, before submission.

Writing your manuscript

Scientific Reports is read by a truly diverse range of scientists. Please therefore give careful thought to communicating your findings as clearly as possible.

Although you can assume a shared basic knowledge of science, please don’t expect that everyone will be familiar with the specialist language or concepts of your particular field. Therefore:

We strongly recommend that you ask a colleague with different expertise to review your manuscript before you submit it. This will help you to identify concepts and terminology that non-specialist readers may find hard to grasp.

Copy editing services

We don’t provide in-depth copy editing as part of the production process. So, if you feel your manuscript would benefit from someone looking at the copy, please consider using a copy editing or language editing service. You can either do this before submission or at the revision stage. You can also get a fast, free grammar check of your manuscript that takes into account all aspects of readability in English.

We have two affiliates who can provide you with these services: Nature Research Editing Service and American Journal Experts. As a Scientific Reports author, you are entitled to a 10% discount on your first submission to either of these.

Claim 10% off English editing from Nature Research Editing Service

Claim 10% off American Journal Experts

Please note that the use of an editing service is at your own expense, and doesn’t ensure that your article will be selected for peer-review or accepted for publication.

Methods

We don't impose word limits on the description of methods. Make sure it includes adequate experimental and characterisation data for others to be able to reproduce your work. You should:

If you’re reporting experiments on live vertebrates (or higher invertebrates), humans or human samples, you must include a statement of ethical approval in the Methods section (see our detailed requirements for further information on preparing these statements).

References

We don’t copy edit your references. Therefore, it’s essential you format them correctly, as they will be linked electronically to external databases where possible. At Scientific Reports, we use the standard Nature referencing style. So, when formatting your references, make sure they:

Sorry, we cannot accept BibTeX (.bib) bibliography files for references. If you are making your submission by LaTeX, it must either contain all references within the manuscript .tex file itself, or (if you’re using the Overleaf template) include the .bbl file generated during the compilation process as a ‘LaTeX supplementary file’ (see the "Manuscripts" section for more details).

In your reference list, you should:

Examples

Published papers:

Printed journals

Schott, D. H., Collins, R. N. & Bretscher, A. Secretory vesicle transport velocity in living cells depends on the myosin V lever arm length. J. Cell Biol. 156, 35-39 (2002).

Online only

Bellin, D. L. et al. Electrochemical camera chip for simultaneous imaging of multiple metabolites in biofilms. Nat. Commun. 7, 10535; 10.1038/ncomms10535 (2016).

For papers with more than five authors include only the first author’s name followed by ‘et al.’.

Books:

Smith, J. Syntax of referencing in How to reference books (ed. Smith, S.) 180-181 (Macmillan, 2013).

Online material:

Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissors: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

Manaster, J. Sloth squeak. Scientific American Blog Network http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/psi-vid/2014/04/09/sloth-squeak (2014).

Hao, Z., AghaKouchak, A., Nakhjiri, N. & Farahmand, A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801 (2014).

Acknowledgements

Please keep any acknowledgements brief, and don’t include thanks to anonymous referees and editors, or any effusive comments. You may acknowledge grant or contribution numbers. You should also acknowledge assistance from medical writers, proof-readers and editors.

Author contributions

You must supply an Author Contribution Statement as described in the Author responsibilities section of our Editorial and Publishing Policies.

Please be aware:

Competing interests

You must supply a competing interests statement. If there is no conflict of interest, you should include a statement declaring this.

Your statement must be explicit and unambiguous, describing any potential competing interest (or lack thereof) for EACH contributing author. The information you provide in the submission system will be used as the source of truth when your paper is published.

Examples of declarations are:

Competing interests

The author(s) declare no competing interests.

Dr X's work has been funded by A. He has received compensation as a member of the scientific advisory board of B and owns stock in the company. He also has consulted for C and received compensation. Dr Y and Dr Z declare no potential conflict of interest.

Data availability

You must include a Data Availability Statement in all submitted manuscripts (at the end of the main text, before the References section); see 'Availability of materials and data' section for more information.

Ethics declarations

If your research includes human participants or animal subjects, you will need to include the appropriate ethics declarations in the Methods section of your manuscript.

Approval for animal experiments

For experiments involving live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates, your Methods section must include a statement that:

Approval for human experiments

For experiments involving human participants (or human tissue samples), your Methods section must include a statement that:

Please note that:

Supplementary Information

You should submit any Supplementary Information together with the manuscript so that we can send it to referees during peer-review. We do not support inclusion of any additional information or appendices in the main body of the paper; all supplementary information should be included in the dedicated Supplementary Information files. This will be published online with accepted manuscripts.

It’s vital that you carefully check your Supplementary Information before submission as any modification after your paper is published will require a formal correction.

Please avoid including any "data not shown" statements and instead make your data available via deposition in a public repository (see 'Availability of materials and data' for more information).

If any data that is necessary to evaluate the claims of your paper is not available via a public depository, make sure you provide it as Supplementary Information.

We do not edit, typeset or proof Supplementary Information, so please present it clearly and succinctly at initial submission, making sure it conforms to the style and terminology of the rest of the paper.

To avoid any delays to publication, please follow the guidelines below for creation, citation and submission of your Supplementary Information:

You can combine multiple pieces of Supplementary Information and supply them as a single composite file. If you wish to keep larger information (e.g. supplementary videos, spreadsheets [.csv or .xlsx] or data files) as another separate file you may do so. Designate each item as Supplementary Table, Figure, Video, Audio, Note, Data, Discussion, Equations or Methods, as appropriate. Number Supplementary Tables and Figures as, for example, "Supplementary Table S1". This numbering should be separate from that used in tables and figures appearing in the main article. Supplementary Note or Methods should not be numbered; titles for these are optional. Refer to each piece of supplementary material at the appropriate point(s) in the main article. Be sure to include the word "Supplementary" each time one is mentioned. Please do not refer to individual panels of supplementary figures. Use the following examples as a guide (note: abbreviate "Figure" as "Fig." when in the middle of a sentence): "Table 1 provides a selected subset of the most active compounds. The entire list of 96 compounds can be found as Supplementary Table S1 online." "The biosynthetic pathway of L-ascorbic acid in animals involves intermediates of the D-glucuronic acid pathway (see Supplementary Fig. S2 online). Figure 2 shows...". Remember to include a brief title and legend (incorporated into the file to appear near the image) as part of every figure submitted, and a title as part of every table. Keep file sizes as small as possible, with a maximum size of 50 MB, so that they can be downloaded quickly. Supplementary video files should be provided in the standard video aspects: 4:3, 16:9, 21:9.

If you have any further questions about the submission and preparation of Supplementary Information, please email: scirep.admin@nature.com.

Figure legends

Please begin your figure legends with a brief title sentence for the whole figure and continue with a short description of what is shown in each panel. Use any symbols in sequence and minimise the methodological details as much as possible. Keep each legend total to no more than 350 words. Provide text for figure legends in numerical order after the references.

Tables

Please submit any tables in your main article document in an editable format (Word or TeX/LaTeX, as appropriate), and not as images. Tables that include statistical analysis of data should describe their standards of error analysis and ranges in a table legend.

Equations

Include any equations and mathematical expressions in the main text of the paper. Identify equations that are referred to in the text by parenthetical numbers, such as (1), and refer to them in the manuscript as "equation (1)" etc.

For submissions in a .doc or .docx format, please make sure that all equations are provided in an editable Word format. You can produce these with the equation editor included in Microsoft Word.

General figure guidelines

You are responsible for obtaining permission to publish any figures or illustrations that are protected by copyright, including figures published elsewhere and pictures taken by professional photographers. We cannot publish images downloaded from the internet without appropriate permission.

You should state the source of any images used. If you or one of your co-authors has drawn the images, please mention this in your acknowledgements. For software, you should state the name, version number and URL.

Number any figures separately with Arabic numerals in the order they occur in the text of the manuscript. Include error bars when appropriate. Include a description of the statistical treatment of error analysis in the figure legend.

Please do not use schemes. You should submit sequences of chemical reactions or experimental procedures as figures, with appropriate captions. You may include in the manuscript a limited number of uncaptioned graphics depicting chemical structures - each labelled with their name, by a defined abbreviation, or by the bold Arabic numeral.

Use a clear, sans-serif typeface (for example, Helvetica) for figure lettering. Use the same typeface in the same font size for all figures in your paper. For Greek letters, use a 'symbols' font. Put all display items on a white background, and avoid excessive boxing, unnecessary colour, spurious decorative effects (such as three-dimensional 'skyscraper' histograms) and highly pixelated computer drawings. Never truncate the vertical axis of histograms to exaggerate small differences. Ensure any labelling is of sufficient size and contrast to be legible, even after appropriate reduction. The thinnest lines in the final figure should be no smaller than one point wide. You will be sent a proof that will include figures.

In legends, please use visual cues rather than verbal explanations such as "open red triangles". Avoid unnecessary figures: data presented in small tables or histograms, for instance, can generally be stated briefly in the text instead. Figures should not contain more than one panel unless the parts are logically connected; each panel of a multipart figure should be sized so that the whole figure can be reduced by the same amount and reproduced at the smallest size at which essential details are visible.

Figures for peer review

At the initial submission stage, you may choose to upload separate figure files or to incorporate figures into the main article file, ensuring that any figures are of sufficient quality to be clearly legible.

When submitting a revised manuscript, you must upload all figures as separate figure files, ensuring that the image quality and formatting conforms to the specifications below.

Figures for publication

You must supply each complete figure as a separate file upload. Multi-part/panel figures must be prepared and arranged as a single image file (including all sub-parts; a, b, c, etc.). Please do not upload each panel individually.

Please read the digital images integrity and standards section of our Editorial and Publishing Policies. When possible, we prefer to use original digital figures to ensure the highest-quality reproduction in the journal. When creating and submitting digital files, please follow the guidelines below. Failure to do so, or to adhere to the following guidelines, can significantly delay publication of your work.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

1. Line art, graphs, charts and schematics

For optimal results, you should supply all line art, graphs, charts and schematics in vector format, such as EPS or AI. Please save or export it directly from the application in which it was made, making sure that data points and axis labels are clearly legible.

2. Photographic and bitmap images

Please supply all photographic and bitmap images in a bitmap image format such as tiff, jpg, or psd. If saving tiff files, please ensure that the compression option is selected to avoid very large file sizes. Please do not supply Word or Powerpoint files with placed images. Images can be supplied as RGB or CMYK (note: we will not convert image colour modes).

Figures that do not meet these standards will not reproduce well and may delay publication until we receive high-resolution images.

3. Chemical structures

Please produce Chemical structures using ChemDraw or a similar program. All chemical compounds must be assigned a bold, Arabic numeral in the order in which the compounds are presented in the manuscript text. Structures should then be exported into a 300 dpi RGB tiff file before being submitted.

4. Stereo images

You should present stereo diagrams for divergent 'wall-eyed' viewing, with the two panels separated by 5.5 cm. In the final accepted version of the manuscript, you should submit the stereo images at their final page size.

Statistical guidelines

If your paper contains statistical testing, it should state the name of the statistical test, the n value for each statistical analysis, the comparisons of interest, a justification for the use of that test (including, for example, a discussion of the normality of the data when the test is appropriate only for normal data), the alpha level for all tests, whether the tests were one-tailed or two-tailed, and the actual P value for each test (not merely "significant" or "P < 0.05"). Please make it clear what statistical test was used to generate every P value. Use of the word "significant" should always be accompanied by a P value; otherwise, use "substantial," "considerable," etc.

Data sets should be summarised with descriptive statistics, which should include the n value for each data set, a clearly labelled measure of centre (such as the mean or the median), and a clearly labelled measure of variability (such as standard deviation or range).

Ranges are more appropriate than standard deviations or standard errors for small data sets. Graphs should include clearly labelled error bars. You must state whether a number that follows the ± sign is a standard error (s.e.m.) or a standard deviation (s.d.).

You must justify the use of a particular test and explain whether the data conforms to the assumptions of the tests. Three errors are particularly common:

Chemical and biological nomenclature and abbreviations

You should identify molecular structures by bold, Arabic numerals assigned in order of presentation in the text. Once identified in the main text or a figure, you may refer to compounds by their name, by a defined abbreviation, or by the bold Arabic numeral (as long as the compound is referred to consistently as one of these three).

When possible, you should refer to chemical compounds and biomolecules using systematic nomenclature, preferably using IUPAC. You should use standard chemical and biological abbreviations. Make sure you define unconventional or specialist abbreviations at their first occurrence in the text.

Gene nomenclature

You should use approved nomenclature for gene symbols, and employ symbols rather than italicised full names (for example Ttn, not titin). Please consult the appropriate nomenclature databases for correct gene names and symbols. A useful resource is Entrez Gene.

You can get approved human gene symbols from HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), e-mail: hgnc@genenames.org; see also www.genenames.org.

You can get approved mouse symbols from The Jackson Laboratory, e-mail: nomen@informatics.jax.org; see also www.informatics.jax.org/mgihome/nomen.

For proposed gene names that are not already approved, please submit the gene symbols to the appropriate nomenclature committees as soon as possible, as these must be deposited and approved before publication of an article.

Avoid listing multiple names of genes (or proteins) separated by a slash, as in 'Oct4/Pou5f1', as this is ambiguous (it could mean a ratio, a complex, alternative names or different subunits). Use one name throughout and include the other at first mention: 'Oct4 (also known as Pou5f1)'.

Characterisation of chemical and biomolecular materials

Scientific Reports is committed to publishing technically sound research. Manuscripts submitted to the journal will be held to rigorous standards with respect to experimental methods and characterisation of new compounds.

You must provide adequate data to support your assignment of identity and purity for each new compound described in your manuscript. You should provide a statement confirming the source, identity and purity of known compounds that are central to the scientific study, even if they are purchased or resynthesised using published methods.

1. Chemical identity

Chemical identity for organic and organometallic compounds should be established through spectroscopic analysis. Standard peak listings (see formatting guidelines below) for 1H NMR and proton-decoupled 13C NMR should be provided for all new compounds. Other NMR data should be reported (31P NMR, 19F NMR, etc.) when appropriate. For new materials, you should also provide mass spectral data to support molecular weight identity. High-resolution mass spectral (HRMS) data is preferred. You may report UV or IR spectral data for the identification of characteristic functional groups, when appropriate. You should provide melting-point ranges for crystalline materials. You may report specific rotations for chiral compounds. You should provide references, rather than detailed procedures, for known compounds, unless their protocols represent a departure from or improvement on published methods.

2. Combinational compound libraries

When describing the preparation of combinatorial libraries, you should include standard characterisation data for a diverse panel of library components.

3. Biomolecular identity

For new biopolymeric materials (oligosaccharides, peptides, nucleic acids, etc.), direct structural analysis by NMR spectroscopic methods may not be possible. In these cases, you must provide evidence of identity based on sequence (when appropriate) and mass spectral characterisation.

4. Biological constructs

You should provide sequencing or functional data that validates the identity of their biological constructs (plasmids, fusion proteins, site-directed mutants, etc.) either in the manuscript text or the Methods section, as appropriate.

5. Sample purity

We request evidence of sample purity for each new compound. Methods for purity analysis depend on the compound class. For most organic and organometallic compounds, purity may be demonstrated by high-field 1H NMR or 13C NMR data, although elemental analysis (±0.4%) is encouraged for small molecules. You may use quantitative analytical methods including chromatographic (GC, HPLC, etc.) or electrophoretic analyses to demonstrate purity for small molecules and polymeric materials.

6. Spectral data

Please provide detailed spectral data for new compounds in list form (see below) in the Methods section. Figures containing spectra generally will not be published as a manuscript figure unless the data are directly relevant to the central conclusions of the paper. You are encouraged to include high-quality images of spectral data for key compounds in the Supplementary Information. You should list specific NMR assignments after integration values only if they were unambiguously determined by multidimensional NMR or decoupling experiments. You should provide information about how assignments were made in a general Methods section.

Example format for compound characterisation data. mp: 100-102 °C (lit.ref 99-101 °C); TLC (CHCl3:MeOH, 98:2 v/v): Rf = 0.23; [α]D = -21.5 (0.1 M in n-hexane); 1H NMR (400 MHz, CDCl3): δ 9.30 (s, 1H), 7.55-7.41 (m, 6H), 5.61 (d, J = 5.5 Hz, 1H), 5.40 (d, J = 5.5 Hz, 1H), 4.93 (m, 1H), 4.20 (q, J = 8.5 Hz, 2H), 2.11 (s, 3H), 1.25 (t, J = 8.5 Hz, 3H); 13C NMR (125 MHz, CDCl3): δ 165.4, 165.0, 140.5, 138.7, 131.5, 129.2, 118.6, 84.2, 75.8, 66.7, 37.9, 20.1; IR (Nujol): 1765 cm-1; UV/Vis: λmax 267 nm; HRMS (m/z): [M]+ calcd. for C20H15Cl2NO5, 420.0406; found, 420.0412; analysis (calcd., found for C20H15Cl2NO5): C (57.16, 57.22), H (3.60, 3.61), Cl (16.87, 16.88), N (3.33, 3.33), O (19.04, 19.09).

7. Crystallographic data for small molecules

If your manuscript is reporting new three-dimensional structures of small molecules from crystallographic analysis, you should include a .cif file and a structural figure with probability ellipsoids for publication as Supplementary Information. These must have been checked using the IUCR's CheckCIF routine, and you must include a PDF copy of the output with the submission, together with a justification for any alerts reported. You should submit crystallographic data for small molecules to the Cambridge Structural Database and the deposition number referenced appropriately in the manuscript. Full access must be provided on publication.

8. Macromolecular structural data

If your manuscript is reporting new structures, it should contain a table summarising structural and refinement statistics. Templates are available for such tables describing NMR and X-ray crystallography data. To facilitate assessment of the quality of the structural data, you should submit with the manuscript a stereo image of a portion of the electron density map (for crystallography papers) or of the superimposed lowest energy structures (≳10; for NMR papers). If the reported structure represents a novel overall fold, you should also provide a stereo image of the entire structure (as a backbone trace).

Registered Reports

Registered Reports are original research articles which undergo peer-review prior to data collection and analyses. This format is designed to minimize publication bias and research bias in hypothesis-driven research, while also allowing the flexibility to conduct exploratory (unregistered) analyses and report serendipitous findings. If you intend to submit a Registered Report to Scientific Reports, please refer to detailed guidelines here.

Before you submit

Before you begin the process of submitting your manuscript, you should ensure that you have completed the following:

Check our aims and scope

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Guest Edited Collections

Is your manuscript within the scope of one of our open Collections? If you find a relevant Collection, you will have the option to select it when you submit your manuscript.

Prepare your manuscript

Have you prepared your manuscript in line with the Scientific Reports submission guidelines? Visit our submissions guidelines page to find out more.

Language quality checker

Is your English writing ready for submission? Upload your manuscript and get a free writing and language check from our partner AJE. Upload your manuscript.

Open access funding and payment

Do you understand the principles and benefits of open access? Are you aware of our article processing charges? You may even be able to secure funding for your article processing charges. Learn more on our open access funding and payment page.

Explore our editing services for authors

Do you need help with English language or scientific editing? We can help you. Visit the Springer Nature author services page to find out more.

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Editorial and publishing policies

Have you read and understood our policies? Visit our editorial and publishing policies page to find out more.

Ready to submit your manuscript?

Once you have attended to all of the areas on this page, you are ready to move onto the next stage. Please visit our online submission system to progress; we formally consider only manuscripts submitted through this online platform.

Ready to submit

To give your manuscript the best chance of publication, ensure that you have completed the manuscript submission checklist below. Please review the submission guidelines again if necessary.

Manuscript submission checklist

To download the manuscript submission checklist, please click here.

Once you have successfully completed the checklist, you're ready to submit your manuscript. Please click on the button below to proceed.

Go to the online submission system

Revised submissions

If you have been invited to revise your paper, please use the link provided in the decision letter to resubmit. When resubmitting, in addition to your cover letter and revised manuscript files, you should include a response to the reviewers’ comments. This is an important part of your revised manuscript submission, and our guide to writing a response to the reviewers’ comments provides advice for maximising its effectiveness.

Post-publication

Promoting your publication

Our marketing and communications teams promote individual articles through multiple channels. This could be through email updates, table of contents, postings on the Scientific Reports homepage, social media, blogs and/or press releases.

We advise all submitting authors to take note of our pre-publicity policy, which you can read on our editorial and publishing policies page.

We also encourage you to promote your published article via your own email lists, social media, Listservs, distribution at conferences and any other innovative techniques you wish to adopt.

To ensure your work has the impact it deserves, you should check out the range of free resources and guidance Springer Nature provides to maximise the visibility of your research.

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Promote your work online by email and social media with a professionally produced and illustrated Visual Abstract. As a Scientific Reports author, you are entitled to a 20% discount on this service.

Authorship

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Authorship

Authorship provides credit for a researcher's contributions to a study and carries accountability. Authors are expected to fulfil the criteria below (adapted from McNutt et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018, 201715374; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115; licensed under CC BY 4.0):

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it

AND to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author's contribution to the study);

AND to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author's own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

Nature Portfolio journals encourage collaboration with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted, and expect their inclusion as co-authors when they fulfil all authorship criteria described above. Contributors who do not meet all criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements section.

Nature Portfolio journals reserve the right not to consider non-primary research manuscripts that have been authored by medical writers. Writing assistance should be acknowledged in all article types.

Nature Portfolio journals do not require all authors of a research paper to sign the letter of submission, nor do they impose an order on the list of authors. Submission to a Nature Portfolio journal is taken by the journal to mean that all the listed authors have agreed all of the contents, including the author list and author contribution statements. The corresponding author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been reached that all authors have agreed to be so listed, and have approved the manuscript submission to the journal, and for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors, before and after publication. The corresponding author is also responsible for submitting a competing interests' statement on behalf of all authors of the paper; please refer to our competing interests' policy for more information.

It is expected that the corresponding author (and on multi-group collaborations, at least one member of each collaborating group, usually the most senior member of each submitting group or team, who accepts responsibility for the contributions to the manuscript from that team) will be responsible for the following with respect to data, code and materials: (adapted from McNutt et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018, 201715374; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115; licensed under CC BY 4.0):

At submission, the corresponding author must include written permission from the authors of the work concerned for mention of any unpublished material cited in the manuscript (for example others' data, in press manuscripts, personal communications or work in preparation). The corresponding author also must clearly identify at submission any material within the manuscript (such as figures) that has been published previously elsewhere and provide written permission from authors of the prior work and/or publishers, as appropriate, for the re-use of such material.

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Any changes to the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors, must be approved by every author. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not permitted after acceptance of a manuscript. Nature Portfolio journal editors are not in a position to investigate or adjudicate authorship disputes before or after publication. Such disagreements, if they cannot be resolved amongst authors, should be directed to the relevant institutional authority.

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Author names are listed in Roman alphabet characters as standard. Nature Portfolio journals can support presentation of author names using non-Roman characters in parentheses after the Roman-character spelling; for example, ‘Mina Razzak (مينا رزاق)’. Currently supported scripts are: Arabic, Chinese, Cyrillic, Devanagari, Greek, Hebrew, Hangul, Japanese and Persian. This will appear in the online HTML version of the manuscript only.

Authorship: inclusion & ethics in global research

Nature Portfolio journals encourage collaboration with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted, and expect their inclusion as co-authors when they fulfill all authorship criteria described above. Contributors who do not meet all criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgements section. We urge researchers to carefully consider researcher contributions and authorship criteria when involved in multi-region collaborations involving local researchers so as to promote greater equity in research collaborations.

We encourage researchers to follow the recommendations set out in the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings when designing, executing and reporting their research and to provide a disclosure statement in their manuscript that covers the aspects listed below (drawn from the Global Code of Conduct)  Editors may at their discretion ask authors to provide a disclosure statement taking these questions into account; the disclosure can be requested during peer review, shared with reviewers and published in the final paper as an “Ethics & Inclusion statement” in the Methods section. Our general policies on Research ethics and Reporting standards can be found here and here.

Has the research included local researchers throughout the research process – study design, study implementation, data ownership, intellectual property and authorship of publications? Is the research locally relevant and has this been determined in collaboration with local partners? Please describe whether roles and responsibilities were agreed amongst collaborators ahead of the research and whether any capacity-building plans for local researchers were discussed. Would this research have been severely restricted or prohibited in the setting of the researchers? If yes, please provide details on specific exceptions granted for this research in agreement with local stakeholders. Where appropriate, has the study been approved by a local ethics review committee? If not, please explain the reasons. Where animal welfare regulations, environmental protection and biorisk-related regulations in the local research setting were insufficient compared to the setting of the researchers, please describe if research was undertaken to the higher standards. Does the research result in stigmatization, incrimination, discrimination or otherwise personal risk to participants? If yes, describe provisions to ensure safety and well- being of participants. If research involves health, safety, security or other risk to researchers, describe any risk management plans undertaken. Have any benefit sharing measures been discussed in case biological materials, cultural artefacts or associated traditional knowledge has been transferred out of the country? Please indicate if you have taken local and regional research relevant to your study into account in citations.

Consortia authorship

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Author contribution statements

Nature Portfolio journals encourage transparency by publishing author contribution statements. Authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript, including review-type articles, that specifies the contribution of every author. The level of detail varies; some disciplines produce manuscripts that comprise discrete efforts readily articulated in detail, whereas other fields operate as group efforts at all stages. Author contribution statements are included in the published paper. This Nature Editorial describes the policy in more detail.

Nature Portfolio journals also allow one set of co-authors to be specified as having contributed equally to the work and one set of co-authors to be specified as having jointly supervised the work. Other equal contributions are best described in author contribution statements. Corresponding authors have specific responsibilities (described above).

Author identification

As part of our efforts to improve transparency and unambiguous attribution of scholarly contributions, corresponding authors of published papers must provide their Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) iD; co-authors are encouraged to provide ORCiD iDs. More information about Springer Nature’s support for ORCiD iDs and journals participating in the ORCiD mandate can be found here.

Author name change

An author who has changed their name for reasons such as gender transition or religious conversion may request for their name, pronouns and other relevant biographical information to be corrected on papers published prior to the change. The author can choose for this correction to happen silently, in which case there will be no note flagging the change on either the pdf or the html of the paper, or alternatively they may do so by a formal public Author Correction.

For authors who’ve changed their name and wish to correct it on their published works, please see SNCS Contact Form: Inclusive Name Change Policy : Springer Nature Support.

Nature Portfolio journals' editorials:

Nature is encouraging authors of papers to say who did what. Nature. Author contributions, 3 June 1999.