Talk:Nature (journal)

message: In my experience in astronomy/physical cosmology, people publish a Letter in Nature when they have a neat result and feel like they need some publicity, but AFAIK nobody (in these fields) really takes Nature seriously for proper research articles. The small size of the Letter format means that a lot of work goes in to compressing the paper, and people who disagree or are sceptical about something don't have access to the full calculations and discussions. Maybe in biology Nature is taken more serioiusly, but not in astro/cosmo. Of course, it's still good for your cv, so people still send articles there, and unfortunately, mainstream media access is still important for getting jobs etc or sometimes even for persuading colleagues that your work is useful - as the wikipedia articles states. So Nature will still hang around for some time yet... Boud 12:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi, this comment/opinion is totally outdated. Any backing? Zero. Closing, because we're in 2021 now.
NATURE THE JOURNAL THE REALITY TODAY
'''
Nature had the reputation of being the finest and relatively impartial journal. The one of its kind if not perfect yet great. Lately unfortunately Nature (due to political reasons) has started to publish mediocre and mainly technical data from Mainland China. Besides it is no secret that China, Israel and the Jewish lobby are are strong and open allies. Most Israeli institutes such as Weizmann, Technion, etc. have branches in China directing the Chinese. Recently Prof. Lieber of Harvard was starred for passing on sensitive data to China. Much earlier Bernard Schwartz of Loral of California was investigated for passing on space technology. In fact Mr. Pompeo warned Israel not to transfer U.S. technology to China.    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.9.67 (talk) 20:20, 10 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  nature as a "sex appeal" journal 

message: Come on, guys.  We are allowed a lit bit of fun...
"Wikipedia has already responded with a blitzkrieg code-name "Operation Brownbeard" to correct all reported errors before old man Christmas neutralizes their numerically supperior and ultra-loyal army of encyclopedists. "Nature error" casualities will be counted, compiled, aggregated, folded, spindled and mutilated and then reported here with all deliberate speed.  Not since the advent of the Napoleonic code has the civilized (see WP:CIV) seen an assault and disorder and ignorance of this magnitude.  Bots are already said to be rolling up the typographyical errors in army group "A to G" while army group "Q to Z" seems to have gotten bogged down in the massive area of "S". -- Fplay 16:41, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That's complete unnecessary.  --  Zanimum 12:03, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Operation "Brownbeard" 

message: I am going to remove the section (again). It has gotten silly. Nature is one of the oldest and most notable scholarly journals in existence. None of it's countless individual articles deserves a mention really at all, except for ones that were news events in their own right. This is nowhere near that, and it is clear self-indulgence and self-reference. Now not only is there an entire paragraph of the stuff (oozing with pride), it has apparently supplanted the article's intro...? This is completely unacceptable, and really quite silly. And there's no way this is a current event. It comes out with new articles every week. This isn't notable to the journal itself (self-reference aside) and is way POV. Dmcdevit·t 20:19, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: (Cross-posted to Fplay's talk page) Still not quite satisfied with having that notice at the top. The point is that this has no place in an article about Nature. It's in the Wikipedia article, and that's where it belongs. How is the fact that it reviewed wikipedia notable at all to it? Nature has a more than a century-long history of scientific breakthroughs published. This story, sadly, is not that. In fact, the article about analyzing the mammoth's DNA recently made big news, much bigger news than this. This is just any other article. It's mentioned in Wikipedia, good, but it has no place in Nature (journal). If some publication with an article here published a review of EB (as I'm sure loads have), would you mention it in that publication's article? No way. What it amounts to is shameless self-promotion. Dmcdevit·t 09:39, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Yeah, sure, fine.  My whole motivation was driven by an early vesion of the template that only pointed to "Nature (journal)".  It got updated to ponit to the appropriate Wikipedia: page (although I still find it a little hard to read and recognize the link) so now the any reader of the 38 marked articles-with-errors has somewhere to go to find out what is going on. -- Fplay 01:08, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Recently it has been reported (Internet encyclopaedias go head to head) by a Nature investigation that Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries .
This is good text, but unfortunately still violates the guideline to avoid self-references. A good encyclopedia does not blow its own horn, and as others have pointed out this article is not significant to the journal Nature.
--Srleffler 07:51, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia article 

message: User friendly has weighed in on Nature vs. Encyclopedia Brittanica  here. (Warning, sense of humor needed.) -- llywrch 15:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Important third party input 

message: Just a comment - the section Famous Nature papers that were fraudulent or incorrect referring to the physicist Jan Hendrik Schön implies that hisis the only major work to be retracted from nature.
While this was a major scandal, Nature does in fact retract many papers; it seems like the RNAi field in particular is rife with either fraudulent results or those that cannot be replicated. Dr Aaron 14:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect articles 

message: I'm changing PNAS to Proceedings of the Royal Society, since PNAS in US, and PRS is UK and more relevant to Nature.  Science (journal) will remain, since it is probably Nature's major competitor.  If there are any objections, note them, but I'll have changed it before I can read them.--Superluser 03:15, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say that PNAS is a better choice, because a) it has a much higher impact factor (in the same league as Nature and considerably above PRSoc, although admittedly way below Nat and Sci); b) PRSoc is *not* pan disciplinary- it is actually two journals, A and B, which specialise in the physical and life sciences respectively. PNAS is a single journal that covers the full gamut of physical and life sciences, and some mathematics and social sciences as well. However, it's certainly not a big deal either way. Badgerpatrol 10:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: However, it's certainly not a big deal either way.  Agreed.  You've got some good reasons for your view.  I happen to still disagree and think that it would be better to have a UK publication there, but I'm not going to get into a revert war over this.  If someone else has a strong opinion, I'm willing to listen, but either way is fine, in my opinion.  It's just that my fine way is better.--Superluser 03:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nature is not a UK journal. It is an international journal, published in the UK. Of this week's articles and letters, only 2 out of the 14 were by UK-based first authors. The news stories have a similarly international flavour.I certainly would not support altering this article for purely nationalistic reasons. PRSoc A and B, eminent though though they are, are not in the same class as Nature impact-wise (PNAS pretty much is, or at least up there anyway) and PRSoc is not in the same format as Nature either (PRSoc is not a single, pan-discipline journal). I'm glad we can agree to disagree however. All the best,  Badgerpatrol 09:48, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 

message: Not a review, per se, just a few comments re. your GA effort.
Firstly to say that this is an excellent article and on the whole a pleasure to read - I've always struggled to think of anything to write for articles about journals!
However, there are a few improvements that I imagine a GA reviewer might suggest to be made before they passed it.
*Firstly, you may consider having a look at WP:LEDE for guidelines on the introductory paragraphs. I think some of this content could be moved to the main article.
*I also wonder whether "nature podcast" has enough content to merit a page of its own. It's customary to include a short description under a "see also" link so the reader has an idea why they want follow the link; in this case, the description would be a similar length to the article. I'd propose merging the podcast into the main article.
*Lists: e.g. Landmark papers, nature family: See WP:LIST. These need incorporating into the article or removing, as they are not encyclopaedic content.
*Consider merging the Notes and References sections.
*Keep focussed - there's perhaps too much text regarding other journals around during the early days of Nature. Remember this is an article about Nature; a list of other publications is not overly informative on this subject; statements such as "Nature was similar to many other journals around at the time, but was the only one to last more than 20 years" (although obviously better written) would probably suffice.
:There's probably more grounds for including a mention of notable editors, certainly Gregory - but a reader is not getting much out of reading just the names and timeframes of editors.
*Important events: reads a lot like a list: could be a lot more concise. For example, you could replace other branches opened in New York, Tokyo, Munich, Paris, San Francisco, and Boston in 1985, 1987, 1987, 1989, 2001, and 2004, respectively with other branches opened worldwide from 1985 or some such.
*Context: The average reader won't understand what an impact factor of 29 is. Perhaps a sentence to explain an put the magnitude of the number into context, to avoid forcing the user to click the blue link, would be of benefit.
*Brackets - try to avoid, replacement with commas ought to work.
*Peer review: Avoid over-abundant section headings. Incorporate into "Publishing in nature"?
*Links - avoid duplicating the content of the infobox.
Verisimilus T 09:03, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Wow!  Thanks for the detailed feedback, that will help loads in improving this article!  I'm unclear on two points however.  Per WP:EL I believe that it's appropriate to link to an official Web site in the infobox and in external links.  In fact, a quick survey of articles, including Wednesday's FA Slayer shows that linking in both places is standard practice.  Secondly, per WP:EMBED, lists within an article are not always unencyclopedic and in fact sometimes encouraged.  I would argue that this is the case with both Nature Family and landmark papers.  It would make little sense to remove links to the other Nature publications and it would similarly make little sense to rewrite this as prose.  Per WP:EMBED this is dealt with appropriately.  The other points, however, are excellent and I will work to incorporate that guidance. --JayHenry 04:20, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Very good points, GB, especially about those essayish sentences.  I'm very busy today, but I plan on addressing these concerns tonight (and the remaining concerns from Verisimilus), so please don't fail the GA yet because I think that after I've made a handful of adjustments this will be in really good shape. --JayHenry 15:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Good Article comments 

message: #How, then, was Nature able to outlast other scientific journals created at the same time in England and become arguably one of the most prestigious scientific journals in modern society? sounds more like an essay than an encyclopedia.
#(along with other weekly journals such as Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) interrupts the flow of the sentence—it would be better in a separate sentence.
# created in 1869 is mentioned several times, perhaps more than necessary.
#Perhaps it was in part its scientific liberality that made Nature a longer-lasting success than its predecessors. sounds like a point of view or original research, so should have a citation to support it.
#There was some talk about free online publication, Nature does publish some material freely online, and don't some or all of the old articles appear free of charge?  They also have email alerts, and news updates.
#There could be some mention of who the audience and readership is, and the wide availablility in libraries, and what the circulation figures are.  There could be some talk about the contents or how the magazine is organised.  Has it always been published weekly?  How many pages are typical, and what size is it?  Are any special technologies used to produce or print it?
#The images are either fair use or public domain.
GB 12:23, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Very good points, GB, especially about those essayish sentences.  I'm very busy today, but I plan on addressing these concerns tonight (and the remaining concerns from Verisimilus), so please don't fail the GA yet because I think that after I've made a handful of adjustments this will be in really good shape. --JayHenry 15:29, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: More comments

message: So, when I read this article, I was expecting to read something about nature's tendency to indulge "sea serpents", ie: people who were quite into comparing the electromagnetic waves felt on earth to, say, occasions of spontaneous human combustion. I was under the opinion that it was that kind of "science mag". Am I just totally mislead on this issue, or is there a massive gap in the entry about Nature? I would love to hear from you...  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.21.215.135 (talk) 01:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What are you talking about, now? Nature is not a "science mag", it's one of the top peer-reviewed scientific journals in the world. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 23:17, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sea Serpents 

message: :Image:NatureCover2001.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.
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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:39, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Fair use rationale for Image:NatureCover2001.jpg

message: The article does not mention the continuous page number sequence across issues. Anwar (talk) 10:50, 29 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page number 

message: From 1870 decade, until 1940 decade, this American magazine was a main supporter of eugenics.On September, 1939, this American magazine published the so called Eugenics manifesto.This manifesto can be read in this site: [Eugenics manifesto].Agre22 (talk) 18:11, 9 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Suppport to eugenics for many decades

message: As can be seen here at Google Books and here at WorldCat, from the 1920s to the 1950s there used to be a Nature Magazine targeted at a general audience and published out of Baltimore by the American Nature Association.  According to this reference at Smithsonian Institution Libraries, Natural History (magazine) "absorbed" Nature Magazine in January 1960.
I am about to add a WP:hatnote to draw attention to this, and have wikified a small number of references to the American Nature Association.  72.244.204.123 (talk) 04:47, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgot to mention that this link provided some context to me about this topic.  72.244.204.123 (talk) 04:54, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

text: I assembled this information into a stubby article at Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/American Nature Association, though I am far from certain I was able to establish the result was notable enough.  72.244.204.123 (talk) 05:23, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Distinction between the journal and a magazine of the same name 

message: There are several interesting figures in this statement to the Select Committee on Science and Technology: . Obviously, some figures are equivocally phrased to inflate the number, but it is an interesting spit down of costs.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.62.144.13 (talk) 07:00, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Finance and organisation 

message: Just to comment on removing " (in contrast to Science where articles tend to review recent changes to a subject in a more accessible way)" - as a subscriber to Science and regular reader of Nature, there is absolutely no average tendency for the research publications in Science to be less technical or more accessible than those in Nature.
~ Reaverdrop
Having been born in the first half of the 20th Century, I am old enough to remember the prominence, if not preeminence, of mathematical and scientific journals written in German or French. This is why in American universities, German and French reading examinations were a requirement for the Ph.D. in the sciences, particularly German in Chemistry. Therefore, I was surprised at the lack of reference to German and French journals in the main body of this article. Frankly, it was written in a chauvinistic POV. I suspect that is why this section was completely ignored in the German and French editions of Wikipedia. That is why I am editing this section to include the historical context of British (English) journals within the wider European context. I think it is still incomplete without the context of American scientific societies. (BTW, more of my chemistry articles were published in RSC journals than in ACS journals.) Laburke (talk) 02:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Notes

message: I think all the citation in the landmar papers section makes it difficult to read. especially doi numbers are not necessary at all. why not add citations as classical wiki citations? --ArazZeynili (talk) 19:30, 18 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Landmark papers - difficult to read 

message: In The Last Man Who Knew Everything (Basic Books, 2017) David N. Schwartz writes “Segrè reports that soon after this holiday Fermi presented the paper to the British journal Nature, because the group at Via Panisperna had decided, following the rise of Hitler in Germany, to boycott German publications even though they remained the most prestigious in the field. According to Segrè, Nature rejected the paper, a reviewer claiming that it was too “speculative.” In response, Fermi sent the paper to the Italian journal Nuovo Cimento and the German Zeitschrift für Physik, both of which published it. This story is so central to the legend of the paper that Wikipedia reports Nature later publicly regretted having rejected it as one of its most egregious editorial errors.
In fact, no such public statement of regret can be found in any back issues of Nature. It is unfortunately impossible to review Nature’s archives to find the rejection letter written by the reviewer, because all records were destroyed in a move to new offices several decades ago. Some historians question the entire story. They observe that at that time Nature accepted only short notes on these types of subjects and was certainly not a forum for a detailed presentation of new quantum field theories. A more logical British publication would have been the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, which had published all of Dirac’s seminal papers on QED and would have been a logical place for Fermi to submit the beta decay paper. These historians suggest that he may have wanted his German counterparts, particularly people like Born, Heisenberg, and of course Pauli himself, to read the paper first. A white lie—that he had tried but failed to get it published by Nature—would get him off the hook with his young colleagues who were so opposed to publishing anything in German journals and still achieve his main objective.“  If the author is correct, it might be necessary to remove mention of this “error” from the Controversies section. At the very least, perhaps a qualification? EighteenFiftyNine (talk) 12:38, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rejection of paper by Fermi 

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thread_title:  External links modified (February 2018) 

message: :Note:  This conversation was moved from WP:RD/Science
Is it right to call Nature a British journal? It's owned by a German company (Holtzbrinck Publishing Group), and it's pretty international obviously. --Hofhof (talk) 04:04, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I would be fine with dropping the nationality here. In an increasingly multinational world, such ties seem tenuous and arbitrary, and slightly chauvanistic.  --Jayron32 04:06, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I strongly oppose such an unthinking move. Abductive (reasoning) 06:06, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

text: Just as an example: Vauxhall is regarded a british car manufacturer and Opel a german one, nomatter they actually build nearly identical car models and where 100% owned by General Motors, which is a big US car manufacturer. Recently the french Groupe PSA, formally called "PSA Peugeot Citroën" bought both, Vauxhall and Opel, from GM, so you could alike argue they where actually an american company and now are a french one, but they are still regarded british or german companies by everyone. --Kharon (talk) 05:03, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Main office, London.  what do you think? Abductive (reasoning) 06:10, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

text: The connection with Britain might be tenuous, but the connection of this question with the Science refdesk is so subtle as to be barely perceptible.  Perhaps this should be discussed instead at talk:Nature (journal)?  And this whole conversation moved there? --Trovatore (talk) 07:33, 15 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Nature (journal)]] still British? 

message: An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect The journal Nature. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so.  Utopes (talk / cont) 02:02, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "The journal Nature" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]] 

message: E.g. this censorship, pressure on the contributing scientists and opaque paid advertorial content: 
https://retractionwatch.com/2020/07/23/author-retracts-nature-commentary-over-concerns-about-sections-sponsorship/
-> let us add to mainspace that they sold out. (To China here.)
Zezen (talk) 16:42, 27 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ciriticism missing: NPOV 

message: Hi, the text "The journal apologised for its initial coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in which it linked China and Wuhan with the outbreak, which may have led to racist attacks." raises some flags. Firstly, citing https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3079293/coronavirus-nature-magazine-apologises-reports-linking-covid-19 and then fixing by Editorial publication https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01009-0 including strong words such as 'stigma'. Why is this a controversy? From other sources it seems that there exists a track record of complying China. Problems: Article 1 by SCMP doesn't cite the actual Nature article. Article 2 sub-headlines "A loss for all". No, the loss for all is, if we do not keep the origins of C19 open to the truth (further research), which we will see unfold over the next years. Feel free to discuss, but it seems rather as concordance than controversy.--𝔏92934923525 (talk) 23:19, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wuhan