Nucleic Acids Research Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

NAR requires a text abstract in English, written as a single paragraph of no more than 200 words, with no URLs, figure references, citations or non-standard abbreviations (Database and Web Server Issue abstracts must include the URL). A graphical abstract is also required. A good abstract is a single paragraph that:

• States the biological problem or need the work addresses

• Briefly describes the approach or method

• Summarizes the main findings or the tool/database capabilities

• Notes the significance or utility

For computational tools and databases (Web Server and Database Issue), the abstract must include the URL and a brief description of what the tool does and who it's for. Don't waste abstract words on general statements about the importance of bioinformatics.

200 words is tight for papers that combine experimental and computational work. Prioritize the most important finding and the key method. Details go in the introduction and results sections.

NAR doesn't require a separate title page. The title and author information appear at the top of the manuscript. Include:

• Full title (be specific and descriptive; NAR titles tend to be longer than in clinical journals)

• All author names, written as first name, initial(s) and last name (for example John E. Smith)

• Affiliations for all authors, including at least department or division, institution, town, postal code and country

• The email address of the corresponding author (joint corresponding authors are identified by an asterisk)

NAR doesn't require academic degrees (MD, PhD) after author names. The submitting author must provide an ORCiD iD at submission.

For papers with many authors (common in large consortium studies), NAR follows standard authorship conventions but doesn't have a specific limit on the number of authors.

NAR doesn't impose a strict limit on the number of figures for standard articles. The expectation is that you include the figures necessary to support your conclusions.

Figure requirements:

• Embed all figures and their captions in the text to facilitate reviewing

• High-resolution figure files are required, preferably with the initial submission and no later than the revision stage (NAR points authors to OUP's figure guidelines for formats and resolution)

• Number figures consecutively in the order they are cited in the text

• Submit multipanel figures as one composite image

• Make captions detailed enough to follow each panel without extensive reliance on the main text, and describe rather than interpret

• Provide alt text for all figures, placed directly under the figure legend and preceded by "Alt text:"

• NAR does not charge for colour

Table requirements:

• Embed all tables and their captions in the text; if needed, also submit individual tables in an editable format (Word, Excel or PowerPoint), not as an image file

• Avoid excessive formatting such as colour and shading, which are not replicated in the online version

• Provide a clear title, explain abbreviations and symbols in the footnote, and put units in column or row headers

• Cite every table in the article text

For Web Server Issue articles, do not use the server home page as a figure unless an explanation of the page is required. NAR suggests a figure showing the result of a typical computation instead.

NAR uses its own reference format, and references are cited in the text by sequential number only, in order of appearance.

Key formatting rules:

• Cite references in the text by sequential number only, in order of appearance, and list them numerically

• Multiple references or page spans under one number are not allowed

• If there are four or more authors, list the first three followed by et al.

• Abbreviate journal names in the style of Chemical Abstracts

• Give the full titles of journal articles

• Cite personal communications, unpublished results, manuscripts submitted or in preparation, statistical packages, computer programs and web sites in the text only, not in the reference list

Example reference (online journal article, from NAR's author guidelines):

1. Capaldi,S., Getts,R.C. and Jayasena,S.D. (2000) Signal amplification through nucleotide extension and excision on a dendritic DNA platform. Nucleic Acids Res., 28, e21. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/28.7.e21

NAR's author guidelines give separate examples for journal articles, books, book chapters, online journal articles and preprints, so match the example for your reference type. The guidelines also point authors to the journal's reference style on EndNote's website; use it rather than trying to format manually.

NAR publishes supplementary material online alongside the article. Since NAR is fully open access, supplementary data is freely accessible to all readers.

Supplementary material can include:

• Supplementary figures and tables

• Extended methods and protocols

• Large datasets (genomic data, structural coordinates, etc.)

• Software code and scripts

• Supplementary text

NAR asks for supplementary data to be submitted in a separate file from the main article, preferably in PDF format. Supplementary data are not typeset and are published online as submitted, so do not mark revisions in red in the supplementary files. All supplementary data must be referred to in the main manuscript, and manuscripts that include supplementary material must carry the statement "Supplementary Data are available at NAR Online". Large data files (genomic sequences, structural data) can also be deposited in appropriate public databases.

For papers involving new databases or software tools, NAR requires that source code be deposited in a public repository. GitHub alone is not sufficient: a versioned release with a persistent DOI (via Zenodo or Figshare) is required so the specific version described in the paper is permanently citable. GitHub-only deposits without a DOI will be flagged at the revision or production stage. Include the repository URL and DOI in the manuscript.

NAR is one of the few high-impact journals where LaTeX is genuinely common and well-supported. Oxford University Press provides official templates for both formats.

Word submissions:

• NAR encourages authors to use the NAR Word template

• Number all pages

• Use single-column, single-spaced text

• Do not use line numbering or footnotes

• Use embedded TrueType fonts and insert special characters using the Symbol font

• For the initial submission, NAR encourages a single PDF file with the main text, references, tables and figures, and supplementary data as separate files

• At revision, upload the manuscript as .docx, .rtf or LaTeX (not PDF), in two copies: one with changes written in red and a clean copy with all revisions accepted

LaTeX submissions:

• NAR recommends the OUP LaTeX template, available on Overleaf and through OUP's preparing and submitting your manuscript page; use the "Modern Large" design

• Upload a PDF of the complete manuscript (text with figures at the end); only the PDF is required at initial submission

• The LaTeX files are requested at the revision stage

LaTeX is a strong choice for NAR submissions, particularly for papers with:

• Complex sequence alignments

• Mathematical models of molecular interactions

• Structural biology notation

• Large multi-panel figures with precise positioning

Many computational biology labs submit to NAR in LaTeX by default.

NAR has several unique features and requirements that set it apart from other molecular biology journals.

1. No strict word limit doesn't mean no limit. Editors will push back on papers that are unnecessarily long. A 15,000-word standard article will raise eyebrows. Write what you need, cut what you don't.

2. Web Server Issue is a separate submission track. The Web Server Issue starts from a one-page summary that must be uploaded by 20 December at the latest, and it has its own review process and its own formatting rules. Don't submit a web server paper through the regular track. It won't be routed correctly.

3. Database Issue is also separate. The Database Issue has its own annual call and two deadlines: a pre-query (brief outline) due July 1, manuscripts for new databases due August 15, and updates to existing databases due September 15, for January publication. Papers describe new or significantly updated databases that must be freely accessible.

4. Data availability is taken seriously. NAR expects all data to be deposited in appropriate public databases. Sequence data should go to GenBank/ENA/DDBJ. Structural data goes to PDB or EMDB. Microarray data goes to GEO or ArrayExpress. The accession numbers must appear in the manuscript.

5. Open access APC. NAR is fully open access. All published articles require an article processing charge. OUP's August 2026 charge table lists the NAR APC as $4,381 USD, and OUP states that prices are subject to change. Corresponding authors based in countries covered by OUP's Low and Middle Income Countries initiative can receive a waiver or discount, and institutions with OUP Read and Publish agreements may pay the charge.

6. AI tool disclosure required. NAR requires disclosure of any AI tools used in manuscript preparation. This includes large language models used for writing assistance. The disclosure belongs in the cover letter and in the Methods or Acknowledgements section, clearly stating which tools were used and how.

NAR has specific data deposition and reporting requirements depending on the type of data in your manuscript.

These are not optional. NAR states that failing to provide access to the underlying data and code at submission leads to delays or editorial rejection.

NAR uses the Oxford University Press submission system. Prepare these files before starting:

1. Main manuscript (NAR encourages a single PDF for the initial submission): title, abstract, body text, references, tables, figures and figure legends

1. Figures: embedded in the text with their captions; high-resolution files are required, preferably at initial submission and no later than revision

1. Tables: embedded in the text; editable-format files if needed

1. Supplementary data: uploaded as separate file(s), preferably PDF

1. Cover letter: emphasizing novelty and fit for NAR

1. Graphical abstract (required for all article types at initial submission, per the author guidelines; the Web Server Issue instructions say it is due with the first revision): summarizing the main finding

For Web Server Issue submissions:

• Ensure the web server is live and accessible at submission time

• Provide reviewer access credentials if the server requires login

• Use a figure showing the result of a typical computation rather than the server home page

The most frequent issues with NAR submissions:

• Citing references other than by sequential number in order of appearance

• Missing data deposition accession numbers

• Submitting Web Server papers through the regular article track

• Figures without high-resolution files or alt text descriptions

• Reference formatting errors (NAR style is distinctive)

• Missing ORCiD iD for the submitting author

Across our NAR pre-submission reviews, four patterns account for most of the manuscripts we would hold back from Nucleic Acids Research. None of them is a margin or font problem. Each one sits in a part of the paper an editor reads in the first few minutes.

Broad descriptive findings without molecular mechanism. NAR's scope statement emphasizes structure, function, and mechanism of nucleic acids. Papers that characterize a phenomenon at the genome or transcriptome level without connecting it to a molecular mechanism are regularly returned at the desk. An RNA-seq study showing differential expression patterns in a disease context is not sufficient for NAR unless the paper provides mechanistic insight into how specific RNA species or chromatin states drive the biology. Correlative findings belong in disease-focused journals; NAR wants the molecular story behind the correlation.

Web Server or database papers without benchmarked experimental validation. For predictive Web Server Issue submissions, NAR's guidelines require the one-page summary to include validation of predictions on new data not used in training. The guidelines state explicitly that N-fold cross validation studies will not be considered sufficient.

Papers presenting a new tool validated only against simulated sequences or using leave-one-out cross-validation on training data receive consistent reviewer requests for independent benchmark data. Include a holdout test set or comparison against an established benchmark dataset with published performance figures.

Incremental advance over a published tool without differential performance data. NAR reviewers and editors are expert in the bioinformatics tool landscape. A paper describing a new variant caller, alignment tool, or annotation pipeline that performs comparably to existing methods has no clear path to acceptance. The paper must demonstrate a specific performance advantage (accuracy, speed, memory, or applicability to a new data type) over the current state of the art, with that advantage shown on a standard benchmark.

"Our tool is easier to use" is not a performance claim. "Our tool runs in 15 minutes on a dataset that takes Bowtie2 3 hours on equivalent hardware" is.

Sequence, structure, or expression data not deposited before submission. NAR's data policy states that all data must be deposited before the original submission, though they can remain private until acceptance. Papers submitted without GEO, ArrayExpress, or SRA accession numbers for sequencing data, or without PDB/EMDB identifiers for structural data, risk delay or editorial rejection. Reviewer access credentials for pre-publication repository entries are acceptable (GEO allows this), but a note saying "accession numbers will be provided upon acceptance" does not meet NAR's requirement.

A Nucleic Acids Research pre-submission readiness check evaluates whether your manuscript meets NAR's data deposition, validation, and scope requirements before you submit.

For NAR-targeted manuscripts, three patterns consistently predict formatting desk-screen failure at Nucleic Acids Research (Oxford University Press). The patterns below are the same ones the journal's handling editors and outside reviewers flag at first-pass triage.

Scope-fit ambiguity in the abstract. NAR editors move fastest on manuscripts whose contribution is obviously aligned with nucleic acids research with mechanistic depth and quantified biochemical or computational characterization. The named failure pattern: papers without quantified biochemical or computational characterization extend revision rounds. Check whether your abstract reads to NAR's scope

Methods package incomplete for the journal's reviewer pool. NAR reviewers expect specific methodological detail. Preliminary mechanism claims without orthogonal validation extend reviewer consultation. Check if your methods package is reviewer-complete

Reference-list and clean-citation failure mode. Editorial team at Nucleic Acids Research (Oxford University Press) screens reference lists for retracted-paper inclusion. Check whether your reference list is clean against Crossref + Retraction Watch