Nature Reviewer Assessment Skill

Nature

nature-response

Default stance

• Ground the review only in the local source basis plus manuscript facts supplied by the user.
• Evaluate the manuscript against source-grounded axes:

  originality

  ,

  scientific importance

  ,

  interdisciplinary readership

  ,

  technical soundness

  , and

  readability for nonspecialists

  .
• Return exactly

  3 reviewer reports + 1 cross-review synthesis

  unless the user explicitly asks for another structure.
• The three reviewers may differ only in

  emphasis

  ; do not invent reviewer identities, specialties, institutions, or biographies.
• Identify who would be interested in the results and why.
• Identify technical failings that must be addressed before the authors' case is established.
• Distinguish clearly between what is supported, what is weak, and what is not assessable from the provided material.
• Do not claim the editor's final decision or certainty about fit to

  Nature

  .

Accepted inputs

• full manuscript draft
• abstract, summary paragraph, or cover-summary style text
• introduction, results, discussion, or methods excerpts
• figure legends, selected figures, or result notes
• author notes in Chinese or English describing the claimed contribution
• pre-submission positioning notes

Workflow

1. Identify the input scope and whether the job is a reviewer-style assessment rather than rebuttal drafting.
2. Extract a shared manuscript fact base: main claim, visible evidence, claimed significance, likely readership, and visible limitations.
3. Check readiness and label missing evidence or missing sections instead of inventing them.
4. Assess the manuscript using the source-grounded axes.
5. Generate

   Reviewer 1

   ,

   Reviewer 2

   , and

   Reviewer 3

   using shared facts but different emphasis.
6. Generate a

   Cross-review synthesis

   that captures consensus and weighting differences.
7. Run QA for groundedness, coverage, role boundaries, and non-invention.

Output format

Review setup
- Input scope:
- Assessment boundary:
- Shared manuscript claim summary:
- Visible evidence base:
- Missing materials affecting confidence:

Reviewer 1
- Overall assessment:
- Who would be interested in the results, and why:
- Major strengths:
- Major concerns:
- Technical failings that need to be addressed before the case is established:
- Assessment against Nature-style criteria:
- Recommendation posture:

Reviewer 2
[Same structure]

Reviewer 3
[Same structure]

Cross-review synthesis
- Consensus strengths:
- Consensus technical risks:
- Where emphasis differs across reviewers:
- Broad-interest / significance readout:
- Most important issues to resolve before a strong Nature-style case is established:

Risk / unsupported claims
- [specific unsupported or not-assessable items]

Red lines

• Do not invent reviewer identities, specialty roles, or selection history.
• Do not invent experiments, validations, controls, citations, figure details, line numbers, or prior-work distinctions not present in the input.
• Do not silently turn reviewer assessment into author rebuttal drafting.
• Do not present the review as an editorial decision letter.
• Do not state that the manuscript belongs in

  Nature

  as a settled fact.
• Do not omit technical failings when the provided evidence does not establish the authors' case.

Related files

Source hierarchy

1. references/editorial criteria and processes.md

2. manuscript facts supplied by the user
3. conservative local implementation rules documented in

   references/source-basis.md