Scientific publishing has traditionally favoured careful checking over speed, and detailed explanations over brevity. But the world of the twenty-first century demands updates between weekly online publication dates, and a Research Highlight of 150 words is no longer deemed the smallest useful piece of scientific information. We at Nature Geoscience have decided to embrace the widening of the traditional range in both frequency and length.

Twitter allows us draw attention to geoscience-related stories as we encounter them, in ways that traditional publication pathways do not. In our Twitter stream we are highlighting articles that have piqued our interest from journals as well as newspapers. Twitter also gives us an outlet to respond to current events: for example, we have closely followed the March earthquake and tsunami in Japan and its impacts as events have unfolded. Finally, we are alerting our followers to the latest papers, opinion pieces and Review articles published in Nature Geoscience.

For those of our readers who are not on Twitter, nothing will change: we remain committed to publishing carefully peer-reviewed papers, weekly online and monthly in our print and online full issues. For those who are signed up, we offer our perspective on current affairs related to the geosciences, in short snippets and real time.

We hope to entertain as much as to inform, and extend an open invitation to scientists and anyone interested in the Earth and planets to follow us.