Nature Impact Factor 2026: 56.1

Nature's impact factor is 56.1, with a five-year impact factor of 56.7.

Both figures are published by Nature Portfolio on the journal's own metrics page and carry the year label 2025. The underlying metric is Clarivate's Journal Impact Factor, released through the 2026 Journal Citation Reports.

The number is easy to look up. What it costs to act on it — an acceptance rate of about 8%, and a scientific figure standard that changes between first submission and production — is the part worth reading.

What is Nature's impact factor?

Nature Portfolio states both on the journal's own metrics page. The metric is Clarivate's, and the definition restated on that page is Clarivate's too: the Journal Impact Factor is "all citations to the journal in the current JCR year to items published in the previous two years, divided by the total number of scholarly items (these comprise articles, reviews, and proceedings papers) published in the journal in the previous two years."

Two things follow from that definition and matter more than the headline value.

Nature at a glance

All seven citation metrics, the two speed figures and the usage counts are published by Nature Portfolio on the journal metrics page and carry the 2025 label. The impact factors originate with Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports, 2026 release.

You searched 2026 — why this is the 2025 JIF

The same offset applies to every metric in the table above — Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor, SNIP and SJR all carry the 2025 label on the publisher's page.

Where this number comes from, and how to check it yourself

To verify it independently:

1. Open the publisher's journal metrics page. It is public, it is the fastest primary source, and it restates all seven citation metrics with their year labels.
2. Open Journal Citation Reports if your institution subscribes. JCR is the only place that also gives you category rank, quartile and a year-on-year trend.
3. Check you are comparing the same citation year. Setting a 2025 JIF against a 2024 JIF from another journal makes the comparison meaningless.

The publisher attaches its own warning to the number, on the same page it publishes it:

"Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA). Because small numbers of highly cited articles can have outsized influence on certain citation measures like the 2-year Journal Impact Factor (JIF)…, Springer Nature believes that these citation measures are not necessarily measures of journal quality, and that authors and readers should consider a range of metrics when evaluating journals to read and publish in."

Is Nature Q1? Quartile and category rank

What to do instead, which takes about a minute:

1. Open Journal Citation Reports and search the journal by ISSN — 0028-0836. JCR returns the quartile alongside the category rank it was derived from.
2. Read the category, not just the letter. A multidisciplinary journal appears in more than one Web of Science category, and the quartile can differ between them. The one that belongs on an evaluation form is the one for the category your assessors use.
3. If you have no JCR access, your library almost certainly does, and a librarian can pull the entry in the same minute.

Is Nature's impact factor rising or falling?

The publisher's metrics page states one year at a time: it carries the 2025 values and no history, so there is no year-by-year series here — a trend table assembled from cached pages is exactly the kind of thing that quietly goes wrong. JCR is where the real series lives.

What the current page does tell you about direction:

• The five-year JIF (56.7) sits above the two-year JIF (56.1). The five-year window contains the same two years plus three older ones. A five-year figure at or above the two-year figure means the older cohorts are still being cited at a comparable rate — citations are not collapsing after year two.
• The Immediacy Index is 13.1. That measures how quickly papers are cited within their own year of publication, and a value that high says Nature papers are picked up immediately rather than accumulating slowly.
• Downloads and Altmetric mentions for 2025 — 205,603,435 and 956,164 — describe attention rather than citation, and are on the same page if you need a non-citation signal.

If you want the actual trajectory, Journal Citation Reports plots a JIF trend per journal for subscribers. Failing that, the publisher's metrics page is re-published annually at the same URL, which makes a screenshot once a year the cheapest longitudinal record you can keep for yourself.

Beyond the headline: SNIP, SJR, and Eigenfactor

Nature Portfolio publishes seven citation metrics on the same page, all carrying the 2025 label. Each answers a different question, and two of them are more useful than the JIF for a submission decision.

Nature vs Science vs Cell vs Scientific Reports

Is Scientific Reports part of Nature?

"Scientific Reports is led by the same ethical and editorial policy guidelines as other Nature Portfolio journals to ensure that all the research we publish is scientifically robust, original, and of the highest quality."

The same applies to Nature Communications, and to every other title carrying the word Nature in its masthead. Shared policy, shared publisher, separate journals.

What actually separates Nature from the journals it gets compared with

Nature draws one of these contrasts itself, on its editorial criteria page:

"Nature does not employ an editorial board of senior scientists, nor is it affiliated to a scientific society or institution… The judgement about which papers will interest a broad readership is made by Nature's editors, not its referees."

That sentence is written the way it is because several of the journals people put next to Nature are society-published — Science is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science — while Cell is published by Cell Press. Where a journal sits on that axis changes who reads your cover letter first and what they are selecting for.

The four axes worth comparing before you commit:

• Who decides, and against what criterion. At Nature, full-time professional editors decide, and about 8% of submissions are accepted, with most declined without going to referees. Every journal states its own criterion on its own editorial criteria page — read the target journal's, not a summary of it.
• What you are allowed to show. Nature ties the display item budget to length: a 6-page article carries about 4 modest figures or tables, an 8-page article 5–6, plus up to 10 Extended Data items. A figure-heavy study is treated very differently at journals with a flat cap or none.
• How it is funded. Nature is a hybrid journal: publish under the traditional subscription route at no charge, or choose Gold Open Access at £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00. Fully open access journals give you no subscription route to fall back on, which is a materially different funding problem.
• Where a rejection leads. Nature's own decision letter carries a transfer option: authors can "transfer all manuscript materials, the decision letter and any referee comments to a selection of Springer Nature journals without re-entering submission information." This is the official, and most common, route by which a Nature submission ends up at a sibling journal, and it is worth knowing before you submit rather than after.

What this number does not tell you

More practically, the number is silent on the three things that decide your outcome:

• Whether an editor sends the paper out at all. About 8% of submissions are accepted and "most submissions are declined without being sent out for peer review." That filter is applied by editors, on the criterion of broad interest, before any referee sees your work.
• How long it takes. A median of 8 days to the first editorial decision, and a median of 321 days from submission to acceptance. Those answer two very different questions, and the gap between them is the part people underestimate.
• What producing the accepted version costs. Nature runs two different sets of figure requirements, one for the first submission and a stricter one after acceptance — including column widths that differ between the two stages.

Preparing figures for Nature

Should you submit to Nature?

The official framing, quoted in full because it is the single most useful sentence on Nature's editorial criteria page:

"Nature's aim is to publish the best research across a wide range of scientific fields, which means it has to be highly selective. As a result, only about 8% of submitted manuscripts will be accepted for publication. Most submissions are declined without being sent out for peer review."

• The advance is significant beyond your own field — that, not quality alone, is the stated criterion
• You can afford a median of 321 days to acceptance in your timeline
• Your evidence fits roughly 4 display items at 6 pages, or 5–6 at 8 pages, plus up to 10 Extended Data items
• You are prepared for a fast negative: the median first editorial decision is 8 days, and "authors are usually informed within a week if the paper is not being considered"

• The result is important within a specialty but not outside it — the broad-interest filter is applied before review, and a strong field journal reaches your actual readers
• You are on a deadline that a 321-day median does not survive
• You need Gold Open Access and have no funding for £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00 — note that the subscription route carries no APC at all
• The paper is a Review, Comment or News & Views piece and you specifically need open access: those formats "are not eligible for gold Open Access"

Frequently asked questions

Sources

The metrics here come from Nature Portfolio's own journal metrics page for Nature; the acceptance rate, timings and fees from the journal's own author and editorial pages. Reviewed 2026.

• Nature — Journal Metrics — all seven citation metrics, median decision times, downloads and the DORA statement
• Nature — Editorial criteria and processes — acceptance rate, desk rejection timing, who makes decisions
• Nature — Publishing options — hybrid model and the Gold Open Access APC
• Nature — Formatting guide — display item budget and length
• Nature — Initial submission — transfer to other Springer Nature journals
• Nature — Journal information — ISSN and publisher
• Clarivate Master Journal List — Nature — Web of Science indexing, searched by ISSN 0028-0836
• Scientific Reports — About — Nature Portfolio relationship, quoted above

The impact factor is Clarivate's, published through Journal Citation Reports; this guide cites the publisher's restatement so the figure can be checked without a JCR subscription. Category rank and quartile are JCR fields and are not printed here.