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

Nature operates the full-time professional editor model. Nature's handling editors are not working academics fitting journal work around their own research; they are full-time professionals who transitioned from research to editorial work.

The handling editor reads the entire paper and evaluates broad-significance, scientific rigor, and Nature family routing.

Nature's first stage is editorial staff deciding whether to send the manuscript for peer review; the editor may seek informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues before making that first decision.

Nature editorial culture is decisive: most submissions are declined before peer review, and clear non-fit decisions usually arrive quickly. Papers that pass the handling editor stage have cleared the steepest filter in life-science publishing.

The durations in this table are Manusights planning estimates. Nature publishes a median of 8 days to first editorial decision and 321 days to acceptance (2025), not per-status durations.

Before the paper reaches external reviewers, a Nature handling editor evaluates whether the broad-significance warrants Nature's selective editorial slots. Nature says most submissions are declined without peer review, but it does not publish a current exact desk-rejection percentage for flagship Nature. A desk rejection most often means the handling editor concluded that the work would fit better at a sister Nature Portfolio title (Nature Communications for broader scope, Nature Methods for methodology, Nature Medicine for clinical-translation, Nature Genetics for genetics, etc.) or that the broad-significance bar is not met.

Springer Nature's author support page describes an initial quality check, before the manuscript is assigned to an editor, that includes checks on authorship, competing interests, ethics approval and plagiarism.

The handling editor reads the paper and evaluates broad-significance, scientific rigor, and Nature-family routing. The editor may seek informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues before making the desk-screen decision. Nature says authors are usually informed within a week if the paper is not being considered.

Nature says the assigned editor seeks informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues, and consults editors handling submissions in related fields when choosing referees. Nature does not publish how long this takes.

Nature says most papers are sent to two or three referees, though some go to more and occasionally just one. Referees are chosen for independence from the authors, ability to evaluate the technical aspects fully and fairly, current or recent assessment of related submissions, and availability to assess the manuscript within the requested time. Nature does not publish how long recruitment takes.

Nature says most referees honour their agreement to deliver a report within two weeks or another agreed time limit. Nature's referee guidance asks reviewers to comment on originality and significance, the validity of the approach, the quality of the data and its presentation, whether the reporting is detailed and transparent enough to enable reproducing the results, and the appropriateness of the statistics.

After reports return, the handling editor synthesizes them. Nature's median from submission to acceptance is 321 days (2025), and Nature says published Articles go through at least one round of review, usually two or three. If that letter asks for major changes, read what a major revision at Nature means before you plan the new experiments.

• Rejection within about a week: Nature says authors are usually informed within a week if the paper is not being considered, so this is the usual window for a decision not to send the paper out.

• Rejection within 7 to 21 days: Still possible as an editor decision before or after consultation; Nature publishes no breakdown of when rejections occur.

• Still Under Review after 4 weeks: Strong signal. Paper passed the Nature filter.

• Still Under Review after 12 weeks: Reviewer-recruitment or reviewer-report delay. A polite inquiry via the manuscript portal is appropriate.

• Status changes to "Decision Pending": Reports are likely in; Nature publishes no fixed interval before the decision.

This is the most common anxiety we hear from Nature authors during the active editorial window. The honest answer: no, 8 weeks at Under Review is not on its own a bad sign: Nature publishes no typical review duration, and its median from submission to acceptance is 321 days (2025). Reports may still be arriving with the handling editor preparing to synthesize them.

If the portal still says Under Review at the 12-week mark, the most likely explanation is that one of the assigned reviewers asked for an extension and the handling editor granted it, or that a replacement reviewer is being recruited.

This is normal practice at Nature.

What you should NOT do during the 8-to-12-week window is email the editorial office. An inquiry at 8 weeks is unlikely to accelerate the timeline.

If your Nature paper is rejected after review, the natural cascade depends on what the reviewers and handling editor cited:

Nature Communications is the most natural Springer Nature cascade because Nature Portfolio supports manuscript-transfer with reviewer reports preserved. Nature Communications operates a transparent peer-review model (reports published alongside accepted papers) and has a broader scope than Nature.

Specialty Nature titles (Nature Methods, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, etc.) are natural cascades where the work fits a specialty editorial scope.

Science / Cell are external cascades for top-tier general-science work. These journals operate independently from Springer Nature; reports do not transfer, but editors may recognize Nature reviewer reports informally.

Communications journals (Communications Biology, Communications Medicine, etc.) are the Nature Portfolio open-access cascade for broad-significance work where the open-access publishing model fits.

Nature handling editors retain discretion to reject after partial review if reviewer reports surface methodological or broad-significance concerns the desk screen did not catch. The 8 percent overall acceptance rate means most post-desk-screen papers still receive a reject or substantial-revision decision.

Nature asks reviewers to answer a set of specific questions, including key results, validity, originality and significance, data and methodology, statistics, conclusions, suggested improvements, references, and clarity and context. The table below maps four of them to actionable preparation.

Across Nature manuscripts, three named patterns generate the most consistent reviewer concerns and the most common reasons papers miss the Nature editorial bar or fail the first handling-editor screen.

The practical question during an Under Review wait is whether the abstract, introduction, main figures, Methods, Reporting Summary, Data Availability Statement, Supplementary Information, and cover letter already make the broad-significance claim auditable. Nature's public guidance explains the process; the Manusights layer is the manuscript-level pattern: what a waiting author can strengthen before reports arrive.

Nature narrow-significance framing in the abstract and introduction. In Nature manuscripts, the abstract and first two introduction paragraphs sometimes prove importance to a subfield but not to an interdisciplinary readership. The Methods and figures may be strong, yet the manuscript still reads like a specialty Nature title because the first screen does not state the broader principle, mechanism, or dataset consequence.

During Under Review, check whether the title, abstract, first figure, and final introduction paragraph all point to the same Nature-level claim. If only the cover letter makes the broad-significance argument, the paper is vulnerable because the cover letter is not what referees use to evaluate the scientific case.

Check whether your Nature abstract is review-ready ->

Nature reporting-summary and methods gaps. In Nature manuscripts, ARRIVE, CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, data-availability, code-availability, image-integrity, and statistical-reporting details often surface as reviewer requests even when the editor likes the question.

The weak point is usually not that authors ignored a checklist name. It is that the Methods, Reporting Summary, figure legends, source data, statistical analysis, sample-size rationale, randomization or blinding statement, and Supplementary Information do not let a technical reviewer verify the claim quickly. If the manuscript is Under Review, use the wait to prepare exact manuscript-location answers for these components.

Check whether your Nature methods package is review-ready ->

Nature-family transfer logic after peer review. In Nature manuscripts, a rigorous paper may still receive a transfer suggestion to Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, Nature Methods, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, or another specialty title if the handling editor concludes that the result is strong but not broad enough for Nature. Authors lose time when they treat that possibility as failure instead of mapping the likely route.

Before the decision arrives, identify which figure, method, dataset, clinical claim, mechanism, or model-system constraint would make a specialty Nature title cleaner. That map helps if the decision is revise, reject with transfer, or reject after review.

Check whether your Nature transfer plan is review-ready ->

This guide tells you what Nature editors look for while the manuscript is being routed or reviewed. The review tells you whether your paper passes that check before the decision arrives. We have reviewed manuscripts targeting Nature and peer Nature Portfolio venues; the named patterns above are the same ones handling editors and outside reviewers flag during first review. 60-day money-back guarantee. Your manuscript is not used for model training, and access is limited to the review workflow.

This page helps Nature authors turn a static Under Review label into a concrete waiting-window plan: check the broad-significance claim, Reporting Summary, source data, Methods, figure logic, Supplementary Information, and likely Nature-family fallback before the reviewer reports arrive.

In our pre-submission review work for this Nature status-page pattern sample, the strongest waiting-window signal was whether the abstract, first figure, and Reporting Summary made broad significance and technical reproducibility visible before a reviewer had to reconstruct the claim from the supplementary files.

This page was created from Nature's public editorial guidance at Nature Portfolio author guidance, Springer Nature author support documentation, SciRev community-reported transit data on Nature, and Manusights pre-submission review experience with Nature-targeted manuscripts.

Source limitations: public Nature guidance can confirm the Manuscript Tracking System route, editorial criteria, editor-led triage, reviewer selection, and published support guidance, but it cannot reveal the private reviewer-invitation state inside a specific manuscript record. In practical author terms, the useful task is to connect the status label to broad-significance framing, Reporting Summary completeness, source data, Methods, and Nature-family transfer planning.

For the Springer Nature broad-significance landscape beyond Nature, see Nature Communications (broader scope, transparent peer review, Nature Portfolio transfer-friendly), specialty Nature titles (Nature Methods, Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics for specialty editorial scope), Communications journals (open-access alternative across Nature Portfolio), and external general-science alternatives (Science, Cell, PNAS).

The choice across these titles depends on whether the central contribution is broad-significance general-science (Nature), broader Nature Portfolio scope (Nature Communications), specialty Nature scope (specialty titles), open-access (Communications journals), or external general-science (Science, Cell, PNAS).

Nature says referees are chosen for different reasons; for example, a technical expert and a person with a general overview of a field might both referee the same paper. Editors screen and triage manuscripts before any reviewer sees them, and preparing a response template that addresses both perspectives can speed revision rounds, given that Nature's median from submission to acceptance is 321 days.

For a pre-upload check of your manuscript against the Nature broad-significance bar before submission, our Nature pre-submission diagnostic flags the framing and reporting-checklist weaknesses most likely to surface in reviewer reports.