Nature Methods is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering new scientific techniques. It was established in 2004 and is published by Springer Nature under the Nature Portfolio. Like other Nature journals, there is no external editorial board and editorial decisions are made by an in-house team, although peer review by external experts forms a part of the review process. The editor-in-chief is Allison Doerr.
Method of the Year
Each January, Nature Methods designates a "Method of the Year" — a field, approach or technique that the editors judge to have enabled major recent advances in the life sciences. The selection is accompanied by a special issue containing an editorial, primer-style commentaries and a "News Feature" by the journal's technology editor. The award has been given annually since 2007 and frequently highlights experimental and computational techniques that transform how biological data are generated or analysed.
Selections by year
+ Nature Methods Method of the Year, 2007–2025 Year Method Brief description Editorial reference 2007 Next-generation DNA sequencing Massively parallel short-read platforms (e.g. Illumina, 454, SOLiD) that increased sequencing throughput by several orders of magnitude. 2008 Super-resolution microscopy Fluorescence imaging techniques such as STED, PALM and STORM that surpass the optical diffraction limit. 2009 Induced pluripotent stem cells Reprogramming of somatic cells into a pluripotent state, enabling patient-specific disease models and regenerative medicine research. 2010 Optogenetics Genetically encoded opsins that allow neural activity to be controlled with light at millisecond timescales. 2011 Gene-editing nucleases Programmable zinc-finger nucleases, TALENs and engineered meganucleases used for targeted genome editing. 2012 Targeted proteomics Mass-spectrometry workflows such as selected reaction monitoring (SRM/MRM) that quantify pre-defined sets of proteins with high reproducibility. 2013 Single-cell sequencing Genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling at the resolution of individual cells. 2014 Light sheet fluorescence microscopy Plane-illumination microscopy that enables high-speed, low-phototoxicity 3D imaging of living embryos and tissues. 2015 Cryo-electron microscopy Single-particle cryo-EM, enabled by direct electron detectors and improved software, achieving near-atomic resolution structures of biomolecules in solution. 2016 Epitranscriptome analysis Sequencing-based profiling of chemical modifications on RNA, such as m6A, pseudouridine and inosine. 2017 Organoids Three-dimensional self-organising tissue cultures derived from stem cells. 2018 Imaging in freely behaving animals Miniaturised head-mounted microscopes and animal-tracking imaging systems for recording neuronal activity during natural behaviours in unrestrained model organisms. 2019 Single-cell multimodal omics Joint measurement of multiple molecular layers (e.g. genome+transcriptome, transcriptome+chromatin) within the same single cell. 2020 Spatially resolved transcriptomics Sequencing- and imaging-based methods that locate gene-expression measurements within intact tissue sections. 2021 Protein structure prediction Deep-learning systems such as AlphaFold 2 and RoseTTAFold that predict protein 3D structure from sequence at near-experimental accuracy. 2022 Long-read sequencing Single-molecule platforms from PacBio and Oxford Nanopore producing reads of tens of kilobases, enabling high-quality genome assemblies and detection of structural variants and DNA modifications. 2023 Stem-cell-based embryo models Self-organising 3D cultures derived from pluripotent stem cells that recapitulate aspects of mammalian embryogenesis. 2024 Spatial proteomics Imaging and mass-spectrometry approaches that map proteins and post-translational modifications across intact tissues at sub-cellular resolution. 2025 Electron-microscopy-based connectomics Volume electron microscopy combined with AI-assisted reconstruction to map synaptic-resolution wiring diagrams of nervous systems, including whole-brain connectomes of model organisms such as Drosophila.
According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal had a 2025 impact factor of 28.3, ranking it first in the category "Biochemical Research Methods".
See also Nature Protocols Bioinformatics List of scientific journals in biology ISCB Bioinformatics Core Competencies
References
External links
Retraction Watch