Leslie Sage (Senior Astronomy Editor, Nature)

How to publish a paper in Nature - Leslie Sage colloquium

ATNF Marsfield Lecture Theatre

Abstract

Nature is one of the world's leading scientific journals, publishing many papers that receive wide attention by the general public. But, Nature is very selective-- <7% of submitted papers are published. In order to maximize your chances of getting published, papers should present fundamental new physical insights, or startling observations/results. Theory papers pose additional problems, as we want only those papers that are likely to be the correct explanation, and not simply exploring parameter space. The writing should be clear, concise and directed at the level of a graduate course in the subject. I encourage authors to contact me in advance of submission of a paper, both to ascertain the appropriateness of the result for Nature, and to ensure that the writing is close to our standards. Posting to ArXiv is and always has been allowed, but authors should discuss the specifics with their institutional public affairs officers before doing so. Lapses in professional ethics seem to be on the rise – I will discuss some examples, and what we should be doing to keep astronomy clean.