Nature Human Behaviour

Nature Human Behaviour (nature-human-behaviour)

Journal positioning

Nature Human Behaviour, published by Springer Nature, covers the full breadth of human behavioural science — psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, sociology, political science, linguistics, and anthropology — when the study of behaviour is central and the advance is of broad significance across disciplines. It is distinctive among Nature family journals for its strong commitment to open science practices: preregistration, registered reports, large-N designs, and transparent reporting are explicit editorial values, not optional extras. The readership is intentionally cross-disciplinary — a result must be interpretable and meaningful beyond the home discipline of the submitting team. This skill is a fit / venue-selection / re-framing tool. It does not replace the journal's current official submission guidelines. Before submitting, re-check the live author instructions on nature.com/nathumbehav.

When to trigger

• The author names Nature Human Behaviour or Nat Hum Behav as the target venue.
• A behavioural science manuscript crosses disciplinary boundaries or uses a method from one field (e.g., computational modelling, neuroimaging, large-scale surveys) to answer a question of broad human-behaviour significance.
• The author is considering a preregistered study or registered report and wants to understand how these are handled by this journal.
• The author needs the journal's significance bar, preregistration policy, and desk-reject risks before submitting from psychology, economics, or cognitive neuroscience.

Scope & topic fit

• Social and cognitive psychology: decision-making, judgment, social cognition, moral behaviour — when backed by sufficiently large and rigorous designs.
• Cognitive and systems neuroscience of human behaviour: fMRI, EEG, computational modelling — where the primary claim is behavioural/cognitive, not purely neural.
• Behavioural economics: mechanisms of choice, cooperation, inequality, and well-being with cross-disciplinary relevance beyond economics journals.
• Sociological, anthropological, and political science findings when the question is framed as fundamental human behaviour and the design is rigorous.
• Cross-cultural and cross-species comparisons that reveal universal or contextually contingent features of human behaviour.
• Large-scale natural experiments, observational datasets, and digital trace data when the causal or inferential design is credible.

Method & evidence bar

• Preregistration is strongly valued: authors must state clearly whether the study was preregistered; registered reports (hypothesis + design reviewed before data collection) are an explicit article type.
• Large-N designs: underpowered studies (insufficient to detect the effect size claimed) are a primary rejection reason; sensitivity analyses and power calculations are expected.
• Replication evidence or cross-dataset/cross-cultural validation substantially strengthens a paper; single-study papers face heightened scrutiny.
• Causal claims require appropriate designs (experiments, natural experiments, regression discontinuity, difference-in-differences) with pre-empted alternative explanations; observational associations framed as causal are flagged.
• Reporting transparency: effect sizes, confidence intervals, full null results, and sensitivity analyses must be reported; p-hacking and HARKing are editorial concerns addressed in the review process.

Structure & house style

• Nature family format: unstructured abstract, main text with Results and integrated or separate Discussion, Methods, and Extended Data.
• The abstract must state the behavioural question, the approach, and the key finding with its scope of inference in accessible language — avoid jargon from a single discipline.
• Registered Reports have a two-stage review process: Stage 1 (design) reviewed before data collection; Stage 2 (results) reviewed after — authors should declare intent at submission.
• Preregistration information (registry, date, link) must be stated in the Methods if the study is preregistered.
• Nature Human Behaviour uses a Life Sciences Reporting Summary for biological studies and has its own reporting standards for social science — check the current checklist.
• Data and code must be made publicly available with deposition in an appropriate repository.

Official-submission checklist

• Before giving submission-ready advice, read ../../resources/source-basis.md and ../../resources/official-source-map.md; start from the official source anchors for this journal family, then cite the current journal-specific page you checked.
• Search the live site for "Nature Human Behaviour author information" and follow the current version at nature.com/nathumbehav.
• Re-check the Registered Reports submission pathway and its two-stage editorial process if submitting a registered report.
• Complete the relevant reporting checklist (Life Sciences Reporting Summary for biological studies; social-science reporting standards as applicable) — verify current requirements.
• Confirm preregistration details: registry name, preregistration date, and public link must appear in the manuscript.
• Verify data and code availability: public repository deposition (OSF, Zenodo, GitHub, ICPSR, etc.) with accession or DOI; "available upon request" is not accepted.
• Check competing-interests, funding, AI-use disclosure, and ethics approval for human subjects research (IRB/ethics board, informed consent).
• If the live official instructions conflict with this skill, the official instructions win.

Pre-submission self-check

• One sentence stating the behavioural principle advanced and why it matters to researchers outside the home discipline.
• Preregistration status is declared explicitly; if preregistered, the registry link and date are included in the manuscript.
• Power/sample-size justification is provided; sensitivity analyses bound the minimum detectable effect.
• Effect sizes with confidence intervals are reported for all key results; the null result is reported honestly if applicable.
• Data and code are deposited in a public repository with a persistent identifier included in the manuscript.

Common desk-reject triggers

• Single small-N experiments without replication or cross-study validation, especially in social psychology.
• Observational studies framed with causal language without an appropriate identification strategy.
• No preregistration information, no power analysis, and no sensitivity analyses — signals insufficient attention to open-science norms.
• A paper that is primarily of disciplinary interest to one field (e.g., economics journals, psychology specialty outlets) without clear cross-disciplinary behavioural significance.
• Human neuroimaging studies where the behavioural question is secondary to the neural characterization — these fit better at Nature Neuroscience.

Re-routing decision

• Neural mechanism is primary, behaviour secondary → nature-neuroscience or neuron.
• Clinical/psychiatric population focus → molecular-psychiatry or the-lancet-neurology.
• Cognitive science review or opinion → trends-in-cognitive-sciences.
• Rigorous behavioural science at a lower significance threshold → Psychological Science, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, or plos-biology (if biological framing).

Output format

[Fit] High / Medium / Low (one-line reason)
[Target] Nature Human Behaviour
[Topic tags] <2–3 closest topics>
[Method/evidence] <do the design, N, preregistration, and cross-disciplinary significance clear this venue's bar?>
[Top risk] <the single most likely reason for rejection>
[Official items to re-check] <registered report pathway / preregistration / reporting checklist / data-code deposition / ethics / IRB>
[Re-route suggestion] <if not a fit, a better-matched venue>