All Nature journals publish concise papers, without repetitive introductions and discussions but with just enough terse prose to contextualize the data and to allow clear presentation of the findings. The aim is to appeal to a broadly interested readership that does not have the time to wade through a dozen pages to extract the new findings. On the other hand, we aim to remain accessible to our diverse readership, which requires that data are framed by a sufficiently broad introduction and detailed discussion. At the same time, the data presented must be of the high quality and thoroughness rightly expected of a Nature journal, including exhaustive controls. Clearly, it is a challenge to successfully fulfil these divergent requirements and our editors work closely with authors to optimize each paper on a case-by-case basis. As discussed above, our new guidelines for data processing and presentation will maximize the information content and the scientific robustness of our papers.

A valid criticism remains: although our methods sections allow the accurate interpretation of the data, repeating experiments solely on the basis of the information provided can be cumbersome. Reproducibility is at the heart of the scientific validation process, therefore, a key requirement for publishing in a Nature journal is distribution of reagents and full protocols that allow independent validation of the data reported.

To facilitate this process, Nature Publishing Group launches Nature Protocols (www.natureprotocols.com) in mid March. The aim is to provide an online resource of a growing set of cutting-edge experimental protocols. Each protocol is described step-by-step in enough detail to allow repetition of the experiment. Following the full launch in June, the site will host both commissioned peer reviewed content, as well as freely accessible unvetted protocols and comments posted by the community. After mid March, we will be actively encouraging our authors to post protocols supporting the experiments published in this journal. These open access protocols will be linked with the online manuscript to provide a valuable extension to our papers. We hope that you will contribute; should you require further convincing, our editors or Nature Protocols will be happy to discuss.

We believe that our improved standards for data presentation and restrictions on image manipulations, and Nature Protocols, will increase the robustness, completeness and transparency of papers in Nature Cell Biology.