Nature 'Under Consideration': What Each Status Means and When to Expect a Decision

Before your paper reaches reviewers, a Nature editor reads the manuscript and discusses it with the editorial team. This is the steepest filter.

Nature editors are evaluating:

• does the paper report a finding that will interest researchers across multiple fields?
• is the advance substantial enough for the world's most cited general science journal?
• is the evidence package complete and the conclusions well-supported?
• will the result still feel important in five years?

About 60% of submissions are rejected at this stage, usually within 1 week. If you have not received a rejection within 7 to 10 days, your paper has likely passed the desk screen.

A desk rejection from Nature is not a quality judgment. It means the work, however strong, is not broad enough or significant enough for this particular venue. The editor may suggest a more appropriate Nature-family journal (Nature Communications, Nature Methods, a Nature Reviews journal, etc.).

The editorial office confirms that files are complete. This is routine. Do not read anything into this stage.

A primary editor reads the paper and discusses it with colleagues. This is when the desk decision happens. If you receive a rejection, it will likely come during this window.

If the paper passes the desk, editors begin inviting reviewers. Finding the right reviewers for a Nature paper can take time because the journal needs experts who can evaluate the significance across fields, not just the technical quality.

The status may still show "Under Consideration" during this period. Do not assume nothing is happening.

Once reviewers are secured, the review takes 4 to 8 weeks. Nature asks reviewers to return reports within 2 weeks, but actual turnaround varies. Complex or interdisciplinary papers may take longer because the reviewers need to evaluate aspects outside their primary expertise.

If you have been Under Consideration for more than 8 weeks with no update, a polite email to the editorial office is reasonable. The delay may be caused by a reviewer who has not returned their report, and the editors may need to find a replacement.

The most common outcome. At Nature, rejection after review does not mean the science is flawed. It often means the significance was not broad enough or the evidence did not fully support the claims at the level Nature requires. The rejection letter will include reviewer feedback that is valuable regardless of the outcome.

Nature revision requests are substantial. They typically require new experiments, not just rewriting. If you receive a revision request, the paper has a strong chance of eventual acceptance, but the revision period may be months, not weeks. Take the time to address every point thoroughly.

Very rare on first round. Almost all Nature acceptances follow at least one round of revision.

• Rejection within 1 to 3 days: Administrative issue (formatting, completeness) or immediate scope mismatch. Not a reflection on the science.

• Rejection within 5 to 7 days: Desk rejection. The editors assessed the paper and decided it does not meet Nature's significance threshold.

• Still Under Consideration after 2 weeks: Good sign. You have passed the desk screen.

• Still Under Consideration after 8 weeks: Likely a reviewer delay. Follow up politely.

• Status changes to "Decision in Process": The reviewers have returned reports and the editor is deliberating. Expect a decision within days.

Through our Nature submission readiness check, we've worked with researchers at every stage of the Nature pipeline, including during review. A few insights from that experience.

The waiting itself is informative. If Nature makes no decision within 2 weeks of submission, you almost certainly passed the desk screen. Nature desk-rejects roughly 60% of submissions within days. Silence at the 2-week mark means your paper is either with reviewers or awaiting reviewer acceptance. If you're past 6 weeks, your paper is likely in active peer review with 2-3 reviewers.

The most common anxiety we hear: "My paper has been under review for 8 weeks. Is that bad?" It's not. Nature reviews are thorough. Reviewers spend 4-8 hours per paper and are asked to evaluate significance, novelty, and technical quality on a structured form. They're also asked whether the paper belongs in Nature specifically or a more specialized journal. That last question is where many technically excellent papers get redirected to Nature Communications or a Nature Reviews journal. You can't control the reviewer's breadth judgment, but you can prepare a strong rebuttal that addresses it if it comes up.

One practical tip: use the waiting period to prepare your point-by-point response template. List every figure, every key claim, and every methodological choice that a critical reviewer might question. Having this ready before the reviews arrive lets you respond faster and more thoroughly during the revision window.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Nature, three failure patterns generate the most consistent desk rejections. We find these across manuscripts we've reviewed through our Nature submission readiness check.

The finding framed for specialists rather than the broad scientific audience. Nature editors evaluate whether the paper's significance is immediately apparent to researchers across disciplines. We observe that papers presenting mechanistic findings in subfield-specific framing, without explaining the broader biological, physical, or chemical implications for a cross-disciplinary readership, generate desk rejections citing "more appropriate for a specialist Nature journal." The fix is to anchor the significance to a question any scientist would recognize as important before introducing the field-specific framing. Papers that open with the broad implication and then use the specific mechanism to support it clear the desk at substantially higher rates than papers that lead with subfield context.

The mechanistic paper where evidence completeness does not match the scope of the claim. Nature reviewers audit every claim against the data presented. We find that papers making broad mechanistic claims while relying on a small number of experiments, or on cell-line data that does not scale to the claimed implication, generate reviewer requests for expanded evidence. SciRev community data for Nature consistently identifies "insufficient evidence for the central mechanistic claim" as a revision driver. Nature's reviewer form asks explicitly whether every claim is supported by the data; papers where this is clearly true across all claims move through revision faster.

The alternative explanation not addressed in the paper. Nature reviewers are asked specifically whether the authors have ruled out alternative interpretations. We observe that papers without negative controls, without an explicit competing hypothesis discussion, or without a direct experimental test of the most obvious alternative explanation generate this as a revision request in nearly every case. Papers that proactively include a "we considered alternative X and excluded it by experiment Y" paragraph in the discussion pass this reviewer checkpoint consistently.