Nature Masterclasses has been developed by Nature Portfolio to provide professional development training for researchers. Nature Portfolio is part of Springer Nature, a leading academic and educational publisher. Nature Portfolio's flagship publication is Nature, a weekly multidisciplinary journal first published in 1869.
Nature Masterclasses began as a provider of scientific writing and publishing training — drawing on the expertise of Nature Portfolio journal editors. It expanded its training by launching two more online courses, Focus on Peer Review in 2016, and Effective Collaboration in Research, 2019. Its online offering grew further in 2020, with two new courses, Managing Research Data to Unlock its Full Potential and Narrative Tools for Researchers. To-date, over 50,000 researchers from over 180 countries have benefited from its training.
The target audience of the Nature Masterclasses is early and mid-career researchers.