Nature Plants

---
name: nature-plants
description: Use when targeting Nature Plants or deciding whether a plant-science manuscript fits this venue. Encodes the journal's fit, the broad-significance and Nature-framing bar, evidence and reproducibility expectations, house style, official-submission re-check, and desk-reject heuristics.
---

# Nature Plants (nature-plants)

## Journal positioning

Nature Plants is the Nature Portfolio journal devoted to plant science in its full
breadth — from molecular and cell biology through development, physiology, genetics,
and evolution to ecology and crop science — including the plant-associated microbes and
the agricultural and societal contexts in which plants matter. Its defining expectation
is a **significant advance with broad significance**: a finding that changes how a wide
plant-science readership thinks about a problem, not a clean but incremental result that
extends one specialist literature. A technically sound, narrowly framed specialist paper
with no broad significance is a poor fit, however careful the work. This skill is a **fit
/ venue-selection / re-framing** tool. It does not replace the journal's current author
guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live Nature Plants submission guidance.

## When to trigger

- The author names Nature Plants and wants a fit/framing check for a plant-science paper.
- A specialist molecular, physiological, or ecological plant result must be re-framed into
  a broad-significance, Nature-style narrative for a wide plant audience.
- The author is choosing between Nature Plants, a Nature Portfolio sibling, and a strong
  specialist plant journal such as `the-plant-cell` or `new-phytologist`.
- The author needs Nature Plants' desk-reject heuristics and a credible alternative route.

## Scope & topic fit

- Molecular and cellular plant biology — signaling, gene regulation, cell architecture —
  when the mechanism reframes a broadly held understanding.
- Plant development, physiology, and stress responses with conceptual reach beyond one
  pathway or species.
- Plant genetics, genomics, and evolution, including domestication and trait architecture
  with significance across taxa or systems.
- Plant ecology, plant–microbe and plant–environment interactions framed for cross-field
  relevance.
- Crop science and agricultural plant biology when the finding has implications wider than
  a single cultivar or trial.
- Methods and resources that open new questions for a broad plant-science community.

## Method & evidence bar

- The central claim must carry **broad plant-science significance**, supported by evidence
  matched to the method (genetic, molecular, physiological, ecological, or computational).
- Mechanistic claims require convergent lines of evidence — genetics plus biochemistry plus
  cell biology where appropriate — not a single correlative assay.
- Genotype/phenotype and field/ecology claims need adequate replication, controls, and
  appropriate statistics; species and germplasm provenance must be documented.
- Genomic, transcriptomic, and structural data must follow community deposition standards;
  '-omics' claims need validation beyond list-generation.
- Data and code underlying the central result are expected per Nature reporting and
  data-availability policy, with a completed reporting summary.

## Structure & house style

- Nature Portfolio format: a significance-forward abstract and an introduction that frames
  the broad problem and gap; re-check current article types (Article, Letter, Resource,
  Perspective, etc.) on the live guide.
- Main display items must carry the broad-significance argument; specialist controls and
  extended datasets move to supplementary information.
- Methods are detailed and reproducible; the reporting summary, statistics reporting, and
  data/code statements are required per Nature policy.
- Framing should be legible to plant scientists outside the immediate subfield, not only to
  specialists in the exact system.

## Official-submission checklist

- Before giving submission-ready advice, read `../../resources/source-basis.md` and
  `../../resources/official-source-map.md`; start from the Nature Portfolio anchors, then
  cite the current Nature Plants page you checked.
- Search the live site for "Nature Plants submission guidelines" and follow the current
  version.
- Re-check article types, abstract/format expectations, the reporting summary, and the
  data/code-availability policy.
- Confirm sequence/structure/germplasm deposition requirements and accession-number
  reporting where applicable.
- Re-check competing-interests, funding, author-contribution, and AI-use disclosure, and
  open-access terms.
- If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions
  win.

## Pre-submission self-check

- [ ] The advance has broad plant-science significance, not just a clean specialist increment.
- [ ] The story is framed for plant scientists outside the immediate subfield, with detail in SI.
- [ ] Mechanistic claims rest on convergent evidence, not a single correlative assay.
- [ ] Replication, controls, statistics, and germplasm/species provenance are documented.
- [ ] '-omics' and sequence/structure data are deposited and validated beyond list-generation.
- [ ] Data/code availability and the Nature reporting summary are addressed.

## Common desk-reject triggers

- A technically sound but incremental specialist result with no broad significance.
- Mechanism asserted from a single correlative experiment without genetic or biochemical support.
- Single-condition, single-genotype, or unreplicated phenotyping presented as general.
- '-omics' descriptive catalogues with no functional validation or conceptual advance.
- Framing pitched only to one subfield rather than the broad plant-science readership.

## Re-routing decision

- Deep molecular/cellular mechanism, specialist depth → `the-plant-cell` or `the-plant-journal`.
- Ecology, physiology, environmental interactions breadth → `new-phytologist`.
- Field-scale agronomy and yield → `field-crops-research`.
- Food-systems significance dominant → `nature-food`.
- Broad cross-discipline conceptual advance → `nature-ecology-and-evolution` or `nature-communications`.

## Output format

```text
[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Nature Plants
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest plant-science topics>
[Broad significance] <why it matters across plant science, not one subfield>
[Method/evidence] <does convergent evidence + reproducibility clear Nature Plants' bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <article type / reporting summary / data + accession policy / disclosures>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>
```