Authors

The Royal Society publishes high quality, peer-reviewed journals covering all scientific disciplines. This is part of our mission to recognise, promote and support excellence in science. We offer authors a range of services including rigorous peer review, rapid publication, international recognition and the option of open access publication. All our journals are compliant with funder mandates such as Plan S and OSTP. We welcome submissions of high-quality science from anywhere in the world. Whichever journal you choose we aim to make it as rewarding and as easy as possible for you.

Our Journal Diversity Statement is endorsed by the Royal Society journal Editors-in-Chiefs; Spencer Barrett, David Beerling, Richard Cogdell, John Dainton, Richard Dixon, Russell Foster, Wendy Hall, Jane Hillston, Malcolm Longair, Jon Pines and Anna Marie Roos:

"The Royal Society’s journals aim to foster inclusive science and scholarship that reflects the disciplinary, geographic and human diversity of the community. Submissions are encouraged and welcomed from all authors, regardless of their characteristics, protected or otherwise. We are committed to equal opportunity and work diligently to mitigate bias in our editorial review processes. We continually work toward identifying and implementing good practices for scientific publishing."

Why publish with us?

There are many good reasons to publish with the Royal Society:

• Support the scientific community by choosing a not-for-profit society publisher
• Join the authorship history of the world's longest-running scientific publisher
• Rigorous, constructive peer review overseen by an international Editorial Board of eminent scientists chaired by a Fellow of the Royal Society
• High visibility and impact, including support from the Society’s media team
• Open access options including APC-free open access publication through Read & Publish and our Royal Society Open Access Equity scheme
• High-quality copy-editing and production standards 
• Free deposit of datasets in Dryad (worth $120) and supplementary material (including video) in Figshare; all are fully citable
• Ease of submission and author care: either directly to us or for some journals via BioRxiv
• Transfers to Royal Society Open Science
• A commitment to open science, open data and optional transparent peer review on some journals
• Additional support and guidance for early career researchers

Find out more about the benefits of publishing with the Royal Society

Which journal?

Our journal portfolio covers all of science and the history of science. 

Please review details about each journal and its aims and scope to verify that your article is a good match. Submissions require a good standard of English and need to meet ethical requirements.

Most Royal Society journals are normally peer reviewed in a single-anonymized fashion (author names are not concealed, but referee names are), while Notes and Records and Proceedings B are double-anonymized. For Royal Society Open Science, Open Biology and Proceedings B, publication of peer review information (anonymous by default unless the reviewer signs their report) is mandatory. For Proceedings A and Biology Letters, we offer authors the option to publish peer review information.

Articles are published under a standard licence (where the author retains copyright) or alternately under an open access licence (CC-BY). Both licences meet the requirements of funder mandates, either through so-called ‘gold’ or ‘green’ open access.

Visit the "Which journal?" page for more details.

Author guidelines

We provide detailed guidelines and checklists to help you prepare your article. 

We offer format-free initial submission for most of our journals, so you don’t need to worry about reformatting to our reference style.

It is important to review our ethical requirements to ensure these are satisfied.

Explore the author guidelines

We look forward to receiving your submission.