Does nature publish theories?
greman suman
Monday, 29 June 2009 23:40 UTC
I have authored a comprehensive theory that is lengthy due to its comprehensive nature. I noticed on nature’s website that articles are limited to 5 printed pages. My article is indeed greater than this limit. I ask then, is my article too long to meet consideration criteria? And, does nature publish theories, especially a theory that exceeds the article length limit? I am interested in publishing, but, would appreciate knowing if nature is not an option for me due to the length and type of my article. Thank you for any assistance.
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Replies
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Hello Greman
I think you need to direct your presubmission enquiry to the journal (you can see how to do that via its website. You can also see a list of the types of contribution considered by Nature here.Although this forum isn’t for questions about particular manuscripts, I can say that in general, Nature does publish theories occasionally, more often in the physical sciences than the biological. Most of the primary research papers it publishes are experimental, however. On the length, you should do your best to reduce the text to our word limit, perhaps by putting some discrete parts of your paper (eg a calculation) into a separate supplementary information section, which in the event of publication would be published onlne-only to accompany the manuscript. Supplementary Information accompanying published papers has been peer-reviewed. However, I strongly recommend that you do your best to condense the text to within our word limit.
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I see that there is a category of Hypothesis, which I interpret as meaning what Greman is calling a theory, (see http://www.nature.com/nature/authors/gta/others.html#hypothesis ) but it is not clear from that description what Nature’s idea of a hypothesis really is. Can you let us have a reference to one that has been published, and say whether a hypothesis is longer than an article or just more important scientifically?
I am wondering if I should prepare a paper which describes all the ramifications of my hypothesis, or just restrict myself to a Letter describing the proof that it is true.
TIA,
Alastair McDonald.
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