Some of the most important and innovative work of the last 150 years has appeared on the pages of Science and Nature, thus contributing to the birth and development of many disciplines, including Electromagnetism, Relativity, Quantum Theory, Genetics, Biochemistry and Astronomy. Accordingly, in 2001, the international community learned of the description of the human genome from the pages of both publications. These journals subject the articles they publish to strict screening processes carried out by experts, placing them in their current leading position.

Nature is one of the oldest and most recognized journals of the scientific community. Its first issue was published in November 1869 in the United Kingdom and since then, it has kept to its founding objectives: "to place before the general public the grand results of scientific work and scientific discovery", as the flagship title of Nature Publishing Group, which was created in 1999. Published weekly, it does not specialise in any one specific scientific field, although its publishers have launched other more specialised journals under the Nature brand, including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Methods and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. In 1970 it opened its first office abroad in Washington DC and then went on to open new branches in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Oxford, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Melbourne, Delhi, Madrid and Basingstoke, England. Its impact factor for 2005, as measured by Thomson Scientific, was 29.073.