Nature Reviews Bioengineering: A New Journal Introduced by Chief Editor Dr Christine Horejs

by Virginia Greco

A new publication dedicated to bioengineering, with a special focus on applications and technology transfer, is being added to the Nature journal portfolio. In a seminar held at the ICN2, Chief Editor Dr Horejs presented the journal and discussed key aspects of the review and publication process in Nature-Springer.

On 8 June, the ICN2 hosted a seminar by Dr Christine-Maria Horejs, Chief Editor at Nature-Springer, who presented a new journal to be launched in 2023: Nature Reviews Bioengineering. The event was organised by the ICN2 in collaboration with the IMB-CNM and the ICMAB and chaired by Prof. Kostas Kostarelos, leader of the ICN2 Nanomedicine Lab.

This new publication aims to fill a gap in specialised literature and provide a dedicated platform for research work in biology, biomedicine, and the environment that is targeted at practical applications in the real world. Therefore, the engineering aspects of the submitted studies will be a major focus and relevance will also be given to technology transfer, translational research, and considerations on potential implementation in a low-resource context. In addition, special effort will be put by the editors to be as inclusive as possible and offer opportunities to less represented institutes and groups, without, of course, compromising the high quality of the published research.

Dr Horejs also provided an overview of the Nature journal portfolio, a description of the workflow and the steps leading from proposal to publication, and –last but certainly not least— a few tips and tricks to get a paper accepted. Indeed, given the very selective scrutiny and high impact factor of all the journals of the Nature family, publishing in one of them is an important achievement for a researcher. It is useful, then, to know what makes a scientific work “good enough” for Nature to want to publish it and how the write-up can be shaped to best present the research and its impact on the field and stand out among the numerous manuscripts submitted for review each month.