Why does the copy editor want Nature to be “Nature (London)”? I have noticed that the copy editors of at least two publishers (the American Institute for Physics and American Physical Society) do something weird when they copy-edit my submitted papers. For all references to papers in Nature, which I include in my references as such:


  J. W. Doe, Nature 197, 412 (1974)


they replace “Nature” by “Nature (London)”:


  J. W. Doe, Nature (London) 197, 412 (1974)


I do not understand why they do that! I know it is customary in they style for books to have a city next to the publisher name (though I don't think it is very relevant in this day and age), but why do it for journals? Are there multiple different editions of Nature?
For these journals, the copy editor is correct.  "Nature (London)" is listed in the American Physical Society's house style for abbreviations, which makes it the standard abbreviation for APS journals, and it is also in the American Institute of Physics's list.  It's not part of a general pattern of including locations, but rather a special case.

Presumably the inclusion of "London" was originally intended to avoid some long-ago ambiguity, perhaps with La Nature.  It sounds like La Nature was more of a popular magazine about science than a modern scientific journal, but then again so was Nature in its early history.

There is no serious ambiguity about the name Nature today, but publishers are reluctant to change abbreviations, partly out of fear that if you've been using a specific abbreviation for many decades, a careful reader may wonder whether a different abbreviation is a mistake or even refers to another journal.