Global health challenges are increasingly complex, requiring collaboration across disciplines, sectors, and geographic regions. From emerging infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance to clinical trials, digital health technologies, and implementation science, addressing today's health priorities demands approaches that connect discovery, clinical practice, public health, and policy.

To support research in these rapidly evolving areas, Nature Communications and partner Nature Portfolio journals invite submissions to a series of cross-journal collections focused on Global Health, Infectious Diseases and Clinical Medicine. Together, these collections provide a platform for research spanning infectious diseases, public health, environmental health, clinical medicine, digital innovation, and healthcare implementation.

A Connected Research Landscape

Human health is closely linked to environmental, animal, and societal systems. Emerging infectious diseases can cross species barriers, environmental surveillance can provide early warning of health threats, and digital technologies are transforming disease prevention, diagnosis, and care delivery. At the same time, implementation research and clinical studies play a vital role in ensuring that scientific advances translate into meaningful improvements in patient and population health.

This collection series brings together these interconnected areas of research, fostering collaboration across disciplines and supporting evidence-based approaches to global health challenges.

Featured Collections

One Health 2026
The One Health framework recognizes the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health. As global challenges such as emerging infectious diseases, antimicrobial resistance, food security, and environmental change continue to grow, integrated approaches to health have become increasingly important.

This collection welcomes research that advances understanding of One Health and supports disease prevention, detection, and control across human, animal, and environmental systems.

Participating journals: Nature Communications, Communications Health, Communications Sustainability, Communications Earth & Environment, and Scientific Reports.

Clinical Trials 2026
High-quality clinical trials are essential for advancing evidence-based medicine and improving patient care. This collection welcomes submissions reporting interventional clinical trials across all areas of medicine, including Phase I through Phase IV studies.

Importantly, the collection also welcomes rigorous trials reporting negative or neutral findings, recognizing their value in guiding future research and clinical decision-making.

Participating journals: Nature Communications, Nature Progress Oncology, and Communications Medicine.

Digital Medicine for Infectious Diseases
Digital technologies are transforming the prevention, diagnosis, monitoring, and management of infectious diseases. From mobile health platforms and artificial intelligence to digital surveillance systems and remote patient monitoring, these tools are opening new opportunities to improve healthcare delivery and public health response.

This collection seeks research that advances the understanding and implementation of digital medicine approaches in infectious disease care.

Participating journals: Nature Communications, Nature Medicine, Communications Medicine, Communications Health, and npj Digital Medicine.

Bridging environmental microbes to human, animal and planetary health
Environmental microbial communities influence ecosystems, animal health, and human health in profound ways. Increasingly, environmental surveillance is being used to monitor antimicrobial resistance, detect pathogens, and identify emerging health threats before they become widespread.

This collection welcomes studies linking environmental microbial surveillance, epidemiology, and detection efforts with human, animal, and planetary health outcomes, as well as broader sustainability goals.

Participating journals: Nature Communications and Communications Health.

Implementation Science in Public Health
Generating evidence is only the first step toward improving health outcomes. Understanding how interventions can be successfully adopted, implemented, and scaled in real-world settings is equally important.

This collection invites submissions that advance implementation research and contribute to improving the effectiveness, sustainability, and impact of public health interventions across diverse settings and populations.

Participating journals: Nature Communications and Communications Health.

Clinical Research in Respiratory Medicine
Respiratory diseases remain a major contributor to global morbidity and mortality. Advances in clinical research are improving our understanding of disease heterogeneity, risk factors, treatment response, and long-term outcomes across a wide range of respiratory conditions.

This collection welcomes clinical and translational studies addressing disease phenotypes and endotypes, risk stratification, prognosis, therapeutic interventions, and the social, environmental, and structural determinants of respiratory health.

Participating journals: Nature Medicine, Nature Communications, Communications Medicine, and Scientific Reports.

Why Submit?

These collections provide an opportunity to:

• Participate in high-visibility cross-journal initiatives led by Nature Communications
• Reach interdisciplinary audiences across clinical medicine, infectious diseases, public health, and global health research
• Engage with editorial teams across multiple Nature Portfolio journals
• Showcase research with relevance to patient care, population health, and health policy
• Contribute to emerging discussions in digital health, environmental health, implementation science, and clinical research
• Increase the visibility and discoverability of research through dedicated thematic collections

Participating Journals and Submission Pathways

Each collection is supported by multiple Nature Portfolio journals, offering authors a range of publication venues aligned with different research areas and methodologies.

Collection pages provide:

• A full list of participating journals
• Journal-specific submission links
• Author guidelines and editorial policies
• Detailed collection scopes and eligibility criteria
• Information on deadlines and article types

We encourage prospective authors to explore the collection pages and identify the journal that best aligns with their research.

Join the Conversation

Whether your research focuses on infectious diseases, digital health, clinical medicine, environmental surveillance, implementation science, respiratory health, or broader global health challenges, we invite you to contribute to this cross-journal collection series.

Follow the collection links above to explore participating journals, submission pathways, and research topics of interest.

We look forward to showcasing research that advances health equity, strengthens healthcare systems, improves disease prevention and management, and helps translate scientific discoveries into better outcomes for patients and populations worldwide.