Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

Understanding the editorial workflow helps you format and write more effectively.

1. Editor contacts you with a topic proposal (or you submit a proposal as a synopsis through the online submission system)

1. Scope discussion: you and the editor agree on the angle, length, and figure count

1. Synopsis: you submit a synopsis with a 200-word abstract, a brief description of the main sections, a list of key references, and the authors with their affiliations

1. Editor feedback on the synopsis: this stage catches scope issues before you invest writing time

1. Full draft submission: you write the manuscript and submit figures that are clear enough to send for peer review

1. Peer review: typically 2-3 expert reviewers, sometimes more, and some articles go through more than one round

1. Revision: incorporate reviewer and editor comments

1. Figure production: the art team redraws all figures

1. Author proofs: you check the text and redrawn figures

1. Publication

The synopsis stage is valuable. It prevents you from spending months writing a review only to discover that the editor wanted a different emphasis. Take it seriously and think through your figure concepts early, even as rough sketches.

This is the most distinctive formatting feature of Nature Reviews MCB. You don't submit publication-ready figures. Instead, you submit clear drafts, sketches, or diagrams that are informative enough to send for peer review, and the journal's professional art team redraws them after peer review in the Nature Reviews house style.

What to submit as figure drafts:

• Clear sketches (hand-drawn or digital) showing the concept you want illustrated

• Annotated PowerPoint slides or Illustrator files

• Schematic diagrams showing molecular pathways, cellular processes, or conceptual frameworks

• Tables of data that you want converted into visual summaries

• Published figures (with permission) that you want adapted or updated

Guidelines for figure drafts:

• Label every element clearly so the artist understands what each part represents

• Include a written description of each figure alongside the draft

• Specify which elements are essential and which are flexible

• Indicate preferred layouts (landscape vs. portrait, multi-panel arrangements)

• Don't spend time on polish, since the art team redraws schematics after peer review, but make the figures informative and clear enough to send for peer review

What makes a good Nature Reviews MCB figure:

• Molecular pathway diagrams showing regulatory cascades with clear hierarchy

• Timeline figures showing the evolution of a field or concept

• Comparison panels contrasting normal and disease states

• Multi-level diagrams connecting molecular events to cellular and organismal phenotypes

• Summary tables with visual elements (icons, color coding)

The art editors redraw the figures after peer review. You'll review the redrawn versions at the proof stage, where only essential changes (factual incorrectness, typing errors, serious layout problems) can be made. The figures in Nature Reviews MCB are recognizable for their consistent visual style, which is part of the journal's brand.

Nature Reviews MCB uses the Nature Reviews reference style.

Key formatting rules:

• References numbered in order of first appearance

• Superscript numbers in text

• For 1-5 authors, all are listed; for 6 or more, only the first author is listed followed by "et al."

• Journal names abbreviated using standard abbreviations

• Volume, page range, and year in parentheses

Example journal article (from the journal's format guide):

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

Example book reference (from the journal's format guide):

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

Nature Reviews articles tend to have extensive reference lists. The format guide asks for approximately 25 references per 1,000 words, so the list length follows the agreed word count. Every reference should be directly relevant; don't pad the list with tangential citations.

The reference list should be current. The format guide asks authors to keep it as up to date as possible and to avoid referring extensively to their own published work, and papers must be published, accepted for publication by a named publication, or available on a recognized preprint server. The journal also asks authors not to list or describe every paper in the field.

Nature Reviews MCB Reviews include a brief abstract (ideally 200 words maximum, unstructured) that summarizes the scope and main conclusions of the review.

The abstract should:

• State what topic the review covers and why it matters now

• Highlight the main advances or emerging themes discussed

• Indicate the review's unique contribution (new framework, synthesis of conflicting data, identification of open questions)

Unlike primary research abstracts, review abstracts don't describe methods or present original data. They frame the review's scope and intellectual contribution.

Unlike some other Nature Reviews titles, the Key Points section is not allowed for Review articles in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology (the Perspective format guide lists it as optional for this journal). Do not add a Key Points section to a Review; the abstract and your conclusions section serve this purpose.

Word is the preferred format for Nature Reviews MCB.

Word submissions:

• Word files (.docx, .doc or .rtf) are preferred; the journal cannot accept PDF

• Add continuous line numbers

• Schematic figures are redrawn, and all common file formats are accepted; figures containing data, such as graphs, should be supplied as vectors (PDF, EPS or AI) where possible

• Tables and boxes are provided as part of the article document

• Reference list at the end of the document

LaTeX submissions:

• Allowed, but discuss it with the editor first

Because Nature Reviews MCB publishes reviews and perspectives rather than technical physics or mathematics papers, there's virtually no need for LaTeX's equation-handling capabilities. Word is the practical choice for nearly all authors.

1. Boxes are a signature feature. Nature Reviews MCB Reviews frequently include "boxes" that provide focused deep-dives on specific subtopics. These appear as highlighted sidebars in the published article. Common box topics include glossary definitions, technical method explanations, clinical relevance summaries, or historical context. The editor may suggest box topics, or you can propose them. Each box is ideally 200-500 words, in discussion with the editor, and counts toward the display-item limit.

2. The timeline matters. The journal publishes no standard writing period, so confirm the delivery date with your commissioning editor. If your timeline is slipping, communicate early.

3. Competing interests are scrutinized carefully. Because reviews can influence research directions and funding, Nature Reviews MCB takes competing interest declarations seriously. Declare all relevant relationships, including advisory board memberships, consulting fees, equity holdings, and patents. The editors will ask for clarification if the disclosure seems incomplete.

4. Acknowledgments of peer reviewers. Nature Reviews MCB uses a single-blind peer review model (reviewers are anonymous to authors). The journal sometimes publishes reviewer names with the article, with reviewer consent. This transparency initiative is part of Nature Portfolio's broader open science efforts.

5. Preprint considerations. The journal's editorial policies say that the Nature Portfolio preprint policy, which encourages posting preprints, applies only to primary research manuscripts. For a review, check with your editor before posting a preprint.

6. The figures carry the narrative. In Nature Reviews MCB, figures aren't supplementary to the text; they're co-equal. The best reviews are designed so that a reader could follow the main argument by reading the figure legends alone. Plan your figures at the outline stage, not after writing.

A typical Nature Reviews MCB Review follows this structure:

1. Title (informative, no abbreviations)

1. Author names and affiliations

1. Abstract (unstructured, ideally 200 words maximum; no Key Points section for a Review)

1. Introduction (broad context, why this review now)

1. Main body (organized by topic with descriptive headings)

1. Boxes (sidebar deep-dives)

1. Conclusions and future directions

1. Acknowledgments

1. Competing interests declaration

1. References

1. Figure drafts (rough sketches/concepts, submitted separately)

The body text should be organized into logical sections with informative headings. Don't use generic headings like "Recent advances" or "Current understanding." Instead, use headings that tell the reader what they'll learn: "Phase separation as a driver of chromatin organization" or "How CRISPR screens revealed new autophagy regulators."

These issues cause the most delays at Nature Reviews MCB:

• Figure drafts that are too vague for the art team to interpret

• Missing figure descriptions (the art team needs written explanations alongside sketches)

• Reference lists that are outdated or missing recent publications

• Boxes that are too long or overlap with the main text

• Abstracts that describe what the review covers rather than what it concludes

• Competing interest declarations that omit relevant relationships

For authors who also publish primary research, see our Nature formatting requirements guide and our Cell formatting requirements page for the two main competitors in high-impact life sciences publishing.

For the official submission guidelines, visit the Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology author page.

Open access and APC: Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology is subscription-only. There is no gold open access option and no article processing charge. All articles are published through the subscription route at no author fee. Six months after online publication, authors can self-archive the accepted manuscript in their institutional repository (green OA).

For NRMCB-targeted manuscripts, three patterns consistently predict formatting desk-screen failure at Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. The patterns below are the ones our reviewers flag before submission.

Scope-fit ambiguity in the abstract. NRMCB editors move fastest on manuscripts whose contribution is obviously aligned with molecular cell biology review. Check whether your abstract reads to NRMCB's scope

Methods package incomplete for the journal's reviewer pool. NRMCB reviewers expect specific methodological detail. Reviews lacking critical synthesis get desk-rejected. Check if your methods package is reviewer-complete

Reference-list and clean-citation failure mode. Nature Reviews editors check references to unpublished work and confirm acceptance of any in-press articles. Check whether your reference list is clean against Crossref + Retraction Watch

Manusights submission-corpus signal for Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology. Of the manuscripts our team screened before submission to NRMCB and peer venues in 2025, the editorial-culture mismatch most consistent across the cohort is that NRMCB takes proposals as a synopsis, and its author pages say to submit through the link and instructions the editor provides. In our analysis of anonymized NRMCB-targeted submissions,

For manuscripts targeting Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

Insufficient breadth of appeal for a generalist molecular cell biology audience. Nature Reviews MCB editors commission reviews that speak across the molecular and cell biology field, not to specialists in a single pathway or model organism. The journal's aims and scope describe a broad scope intended to reach the widest possible audience, and its writing guidance asks that articles be accessible to readers working in related disciplines. Proposals that center a niche sub-topic without articulating why the mechanism or principle illuminates broader biology are declined at the outline stage, before full draft is requested.

Advocate-mode literature coverage that champions one mechanistic model. The Nature Reviews reviewer guidance asks reviewers to consider whether the discussion of the literature is fair and accurate. Reviews that build a strong case for one interpretation while treating alternative models as minor caveats fail this bar. The expectation is synthesis and adjudication of competing evidence, not advocacy. A review that reads like a grant application for the lab's own model will receive revision requests that are difficult to satisfy without reconceiving the structure.

Literature summary without interpretive synthesis or a new conceptual framework. The distinction NR MCB editors draw is between cataloguing recent advances and providing a framework for understanding them. A review that walks through landmark papers chronologically, summarizing each, does not meet the standard. The format guide asks for an introduction that makes clear why it is timely to write on the topic and a concluding section that discusses the implications of the latest work and possible future research directions. Reviews that do not commit to a position on unresolved debates, or do not propose a framework the field can work with, are asked to revise or decline.

Scope mismatch with a recent NR MCB review on the same topic. Because the journal publishes a relatively small number of reviews per year, any topic already covered within the past 2-3 years requires a strong rationale for why a new review adds distinct value. Proposals that do not explicitly address why now, and how the review is distinct from the last NR MCB review on this subject, are deprioritized. Check the journal's recent archive before submitting a pre-submission inquiry.

A Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology submission readiness check evaluates manuscript structure, breadth of appeal, and synthesis quality against these desk-rejection patterns before you invest writing time in a full draft.