The “communications” branding has more to do with the prestige level and expectation of faster-paced short research notes. Usually opinion pieces are explicitly

The “communications” branding has more to do with the prestige level and expectation of faster-paced short research notes. Usually opinion pieces are explicitly filed under a “perspective” track (vs review and original research track). The hierarchy usually goes Nature, Nature Communications, Nature [field name] communications, then field specific nature-owned journals (which sometimes have higher status than the field specific communications journals)