Olive Heffernan
Regular readers of Climate Feedback will notice that it’s been a bit quiet as of late. That’s because of some major – and massively exciting – changes taking place behind the scenes. In short, Nature Publishing Group is launching a journal on climate change and I’ve been appointed as the Chief Editor.
The journal, Nature Climate Change, will launch in print in April of next year. That’s a while away yet, but launching a peer reviewed journal is a lengthy process, so already the wheels are beginning to turn to make that happen on schedule.
Over the next month, I’ll also be finishing up Nature Reports Climate Change, the web portal on climate science and society that I’ve been running for the past three years. Nature Reports Climate Change will come to an end in May once we close the next digital issue. The archived content will still be freely accessible, but I’ll be taking a break from commissioning content for a few months while I recruit a staff of editors, visit research institutes and prepare for the pre-launch phase of the journal, which will happen later this year.
Now, some of you may ask why we’re launching a climate research journal, given that there are several already out there. Essentially, Nature Climate Change will be a different beast from all established journals.
Nature Climate Change will publish original research across the physical and social sciences on a monthly basis and will strive to forge and synthesize interdisciplinary research. As such, it will be the first Nature branded journal to publish peer-review content from the social sciences community.
As with all Nature research journals, Nature Climate Change will have a staff of full time editors who will offer a quick turn around on submitted manuscripts. Nature Climate Change editors will aim to get an initial response to authors within 7 days. For a Nature research journal, if a paper goes out to peer review, the averge acceptance time is about 100 days and if a paper is accepted, the average time to publication is approximately 30 days. Nature Climate Change will aim to follow, and improve upon, that tradition.
The journal’s mission will be to unify the body of research on the understanding, and impacts, of climate change as well as to place it in a wider social and political context. In addition to the peer reviewed content, it will have a dynamic front half, taking forward the features, opinions, analysis and reviews that Nature Reports Climate Change has become known for over the past three years.
As Chief Editor of Nature Climate Change, I’ll continue my role as moderator of the Climate Feedback blog. Over the coming months, I’ll be blogging about how the launch is progressing, as well as continuing my usual posts on climate science, policy and such like.
I’ll say much more about all of this in due course, but I just wanted to give you, our readers, a heads up on the changes afoot.