Discussion
Started 18 April 2022

Is Nature Scientific Reports a good/reputable journal?

While Nature Scientific Reports (NSR) is obviously not as rigorous as most of the other Nature journals, is it widely considered a reputable journal? I have heard that some institutions discourage publishing there because they are more profit-driven and less scientifically rigorous. Just curious as to what the general opinion is about this journal.

Most recent answer

Lukas Messmann
University of Augsburg
I can't judge the rigour of the review process yet, but I accepted a review invitation with a very short review deadline of only three weeks. Despite this, I never received a reply from the journal or the editor to an inquiry critical to my review in 2.5 weeks. However, SREP still invited me to two other reviews and sent out several reminder emails when I didn't reply to an invitation on a weekend. A journal that seems to show this much contempt for its reviewers is not something I would particularly recommend.
1 Recommendation

Popular replies (1)

Hans Georg Koch
University of Freiburg
In my opinion, we should stop evaluating scientific quality based on the journal where it was published or based on IF. Scientific reports and most other open-access journals report on good science but also publish low-quality studies. But this we see also in journals considered to be high-impact, like Nature etc. High-impact journals often follow the main-stream, while journals like scientifc reports are also open to unconventional ideas and studies, which makes them valuable.
26 Recommendations

All replies (25)

you can check the impact factor, sci index of the journal, predatory journals have low impact factor and high acceptance rate.
1 Recommendation
Medhat Elsahookie
University of Baghdad
You can check the list of the impact factor of journals, you will know really it's rank among other journals. Regards.
1 Recommendation
Chan Kin Onn
University of Kansas
I know the IF of the journal. I'm asking about the general opinion of the journal. IF is obviously a flawed metric and is by no means a reflection of the journal's reputation. There are many reputable journals with relatively low IF and vice versa.
1 Recommendation
Erik I Svensson
Lund University
No. It is not a good journal and I would avoid publishing there.
Jerker Vinterstare
AquaBiota Water Research
Erik I Svensson, can you please give some arguments for why Scientific Reports is "not a good journal" and why you "would avoid publishing there"?
4 Recommendations
Joacim Näslund
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
It is an non-selective journal and hence not particularly "valuable" on a CV. As with many other mega-journals the peer review process is varying in quality, and the process is quite exploitative in terms of pushing reviewers to make quick decisions. It's impact factor doesn't really matter, because it covers many fields with different citation rates. It's often regarded as the give-up option, i.e. a journal where you can get your results out when you have tried and failed at the standard journals in your field. Having a few publications in this journal won't hurt your career (everyone ends up with low-impact projects), but having a large proportion of publications in it may hurt - it will be percieved as not being able to produce impactful research by some evaluators.
I would personally not publish there, because there are other non-selective open-access journals with better reputation (e.g. Ecology & Evolution or Ecosphere in my field) - they have lower impact factors, but are less regarded as thrash-can journals as compared to Sci Rep.
Also, it's "Scientific Reports", not "Nature Scientific Reports" - it's just asssociated to Nature Publishing Group which is part of the publisher SpringerNature. They presumably use the nature.com web-adress to attract readers.
14 Recommendations
Giacomo Assandri
University of Piemonte Orientale Amedeo Avogadro
I read there more rubbish than average, but some papers are OK. Its IF is disproportionately higher than its quality, at least compared to journals in my field.
Rob Keller
Charlemagne College, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Dear Chan Kin Onn I will use a car analogy. Take a Volkswagen Golf it is one of the most popular and best sold cars in the world and basically the standard in their league:
-Is it as reputable as a BMW (3 series and above)? No.
Likewise: Is Sci. Rep. comparable with let’s say PNAS or EMBO J.? No.
-Or as exclusive as a Ferrari? No.
So, is Sci. Rep. comparable with Nature or Science? No.
-Sci. Rep. is comparable with PLoS One (THE open access journal for years with a record number of 31500 published papers in 2013).
-Scientific Reports is a Nature product like a BMW 1 series is related to the top models of BMW and iScience is related to the reputed Cell Press journals like an Audi A1 is related to the top models of Audi.
Scientific Reports is nowadays the largest megajournal https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/04/06/scientific-reports-overtakes-plos-one-as-largest-megajournal/ with more than 20000 papers annually. As said PLoS ONE introduced a publishing model that turned out to be a huge success. Accepting papers based on scientific rigor and not so much on the perceived importance by a small group of people. Because of the appreciation of this approach by PLoS, the ‘competition’ started their own journal:
-Springer Nature with Scientific Reports https://www.nature.com/srep/
-Cell Press with iScience https://www.cell.com/iscience/home
-MDPI with International Journal of Molecular Sciences https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijms
-Elsevier with Heliyon https://www.cell.com/heliyon/home
So, is Scientific Reports reputable/good? I say yes, within their league. They perform peer review, fulfil all imaginable scientific standards (membership DOAJ, COPE etc.) and are indexed in all imaginable serious indexing (Scopus, Clarivate’s SCIE, PubMed). Yes, they make use of the little ‘glow’ of Nature’s reputation, some researchers are susceptible for this little marketing USP.
Best regards.
2 Recommendations
Hans Georg Koch
University of Freiburg
In my opinion, we should stop evaluating scientific quality based on the journal where it was published or based on IF. Scientific reports and most other open-access journals report on good science but also publish low-quality studies. But this we see also in journals considered to be high-impact, like Nature etc. High-impact journals often follow the main-stream, while journals like scientifc reports are also open to unconventional ideas and studies, which makes them valuable.
26 Recommendations
Mikkel Brydegaard
Lund University
NSR is the money machine of Nature publishing group. One amount other tricks to turn OA into cash and lure state money out of desperate researchers with uncertain employments. Other glossy journals have similar OA daughter journal like scientific advances and what not. One would not sell a hotdog downtown for a negative amount of money, you should also ask yourself if your hard research work is worth minus 4000 USD for a Filipino typesetter to make into a pdf file. Finally about glossy journals, a recent review demonstrated that high impact journals also have the lowest reproducibilities. In conclusion: high IF, peer-review and excessive OA charges is not a guarantee for good quality research.
2 Recommendations
K V Rajendran Nair
Presidency University
The papers published in the journals indexed in Scopus data base are authentic and genuine and can be considered as a bench mark. Just see the citation of the papers you have opted to read from these sources
3 Recommendations
Jan Borovička
The Czech Academy of Sciences
No, it is not. We have described our experience with this journal in a recent article. They published a really bad study. Then they denied to publish our reaction. Then, they retracted the bad paper but according to the information on the website, the paper was retracted upon the request of authors - this is a lie.
Loizides M., Alvarado P., Moreau P.-A., Assyov B., Halasů V., Stadler M., Rinaldi A.,
Marques G., Zervakis G.I., Borovička J., Van Vooren N., Grebenc T., Richard F., Taşkin H., Gube M., Sammut C., Agnello C., Baroni T.J., Crous P., Fryssouli V., Gonou Z., Guidori U., Gulden G., Hansen K., Kristiansen R., Læssøe T., Mateos J., Miller A., Moreno G., Perić B., Polemis E., Salom J.C., Siquier J.L., Snabl M., Weholt Ø., Bellanger J.-M. (2022): Has taxonomic vandalism gone too far? A case study, the rise of the pay‑to‑publish model and the pitfalls of Morchella systematics. Mycological Progress 21 (1): 7–38.
2 Recommendations
Alberto Ardid Segura
University of Canterbury
Adding some stats on the acceptance rate (ratio of articles published with respect to those submitted) for some typical high-impact journals:
Scientific Report ~50%
JGR Solid Earth ~30%
AGU Advances ~18%
Nature Communications ~8%
Alberto Ardid Segura
University of Canterbury
Frontiers and MDPI has also been pointed of being predatory. My feeling is that NSR is great way from Nature to keep the money in the house XD.
1 Recommendation
Susanta Nath
Institute served: Durgapur Govt. College, Darjeeling Govt. College,Bidhannagar College, Singur Govt. College
Scientific Reports is a good journal. To publish in this journal is prestigious, and after hard peer review, this journal accept the manuscript for publication.
2 Recommendations
Sonaljit Mukherjee
Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut
4.9 impact factor and 5th most cited journal in the world, suggests that it should be a good journal. Not as prestigious as nature communications, but still quite good. My experience with the journal was pretty positive. They responded back very rapidly.
5 Recommendations
Fatemeh Khoshroo
University of Tehran
The peer-review was really great and precise paying meticulous attention to every thing.
2 Recommendations
Ankit Pal
University of Colorado
the peer review process is very good and supportive.
William H. Woodall
Virginia Tech
They publish some very bad papers.
2 Recommendations
Alexandra Andersen
Parks Australia
After having just reviewed a paper for Scientific Reports and experiencing the process from a reviewer perspective I'm not sure I would consider publishing there...
3 Recommendations
Jan Borovička
The Czech Academy of Sciences
Would you be so kind to provide some details?
Alexandra Andersen
Parks Australia
Personally, I believed the paper should have been rejected. Methods were unclear, key limitations were not addressed so results were overstated, it lacked clarity, and there were major issues with the presentation of the data. I actually thought that the invitation to review was a scam initially because of the presentation of the paper. The other peer reviewer apparently had no major issues with the paper, which I found really difficult to understand. It was accepted with revisions. Because of that, I don't believe the peer review process is particularly rigorous at this journal, especially compared to my own experience as both a reviewer and as an author. I acknowledge of course that the whole point of the peer review process is to have multiple referees assess the paper, and that my opinion doesn't equal fact. But my scientific training was screaming!
4 Recommendations
Jan Borovička
The Czech Academy of Sciences
Thanks for clarification.
Lukas Messmann
University of Augsburg
I can't judge the rigour of the review process yet, but I accepted a review invitation with a very short review deadline of only three weeks. Despite this, I never received a reply from the journal or the editor to an inquiry critical to my review in 2.5 weeks. However, SREP still invited me to two other reviews and sent out several reminder emails when I didn't reply to an invitation on a weekend. A journal that seems to show this much contempt for its reviewers is not something I would particularly recommend.
1 Recommendation

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