Testing the waters: Nature/Science type journal article?

[mercaptovizadeh]

My work right now needs to get published and I'm wondering what and how much (material) is considered eligible for publication in one of these big name journals.

In brief (and anonymous) terms, my work is on protein X in disease Y. Protein X has never been even postulated to have a role in disease Y, but apparently has a very big role.

There are some mechanistic hints at what point protein X might be involved (or rather NOT involved) in disease Y, but the mechanism is not fully fleshed out. I'm working on it but I'm worried that I'll get scooped by then if I don't publish really soon.

Protein X has been around a lot in the literature the past 20 years (it's not some orphan protein) but has never been well researched on diseases that occur in the organ affected by disease Y, much less in disease Y itself.

Disease Y is of great relevance to human health in general (very common disease and on the rise).

All of the work is in animal models (i.e. no human data). There are recently published one or two abstracts that suggest relevance in the human disease, but it's very weak evidence overall.

Does this sound like it's a candidate for Nature/Nature Medicine/Letters/Science/etc. type paper or more appropriate for something less high powered?

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[jmt1984]

My work right now needs to get published and I'm wondering what and how much (material) is considered eligible for publication in one of these big name journals.

In brief (and anonymous) terms, my work is on protein X in disease Y. Protein X has never been even postulated to have a role in disease Y, but apparently has a very big role.

There are some mechanistic hints at what point protein X might be involved (or rather NOT involved) in disease Y, but the mechanism is not fully fleshed out. I'm working on it but I'm worried that I'll get scooped by then if I don't publish really soon.

Protein X has been around a lot in the literature the past 20 years (it's not some orphan protein) but has never been well researched on diseases that occur in the organ affected by disease Y, much less in disease Y itself.

Disease Y is of great relevance to human health in general (very common disease and on the rise).

All of the work is in animal models (i.e. no human data). There are recently published one or two abstracts that suggest relevance in the human disease, but it's very weak evidence overall.

Does this sound like it's a candidate for Nature/Nature Medicine/Letters/Science/etc. type paper or more appropriate for something less high powered?

It is never about how much research to get into one of these high impact journals, but the quality (and typically paradigm shifting) of work. In my opinion (and experience), most of the work that is published in those journals go much beyond mechanism most of the time, they tie a lot of unseen connections, typically have an excellent clinical component (esp. Nature Med), and more often than not are subjects that are considered "hot topics".

My advice would be not to get hung up on where it is going to be published, just do the best science that you can. Based on what you said, if you don't have a clear mechanism, and only weak evidence for a human disease connection, you may have trouble publishing much above JBC (impact 8.8). If you have access, getting some human samples and running a few experiments to tie in a human disease state could get you to a JCI level journal (~15 impact factor) which is nothing to sniff at.

Good luck!