This issue marks the first anniversary of Nature Physics. Of course, the time has flown; it doesn't seem that it can be so long since our launch issue, in October 2005. But it has been a remarkably satisfying year for the Nature Physics team — and, we hope, for our readers too.

This time last year, in our first editorial, we admitted the challenge to be faced — to live up to our name and cover all areas of the vast subject that is 'physics'. By and large, the research papers published in our first 12 issues have spanned the spectrum: from astrophysics to quantum information, condensed matter to optics, biophysics to fluid dynamics, and more. In our first issue, Immanuel Bloch reviewed the experimental progress made using ultracold gases trapped in optical lattices; since then, other review articles have covered supernovae, quantum dots, the cytoskeleton of biological cells, high-temperature superconductors and nuclear isospin symmetry; and in this issue (page 665), Leonard Susskind reviews the physics of black holes, and the role of string theory in untangling their paradoxical behaviour. That's definitely a spectrum of physics.

Month by month, the issues have been getting fatter, as we hope they'll continue to do. All of the papers published in Nature Physics are being entered in the appropriate citation databases: Thomson ISI, Scopus and ADS (the Smithsonian/NASA astrophysics database system, which includes other physics as well as astrophysics, and is linked to the arXiv preprint server). Our first impact factor will be issued in June 2007.

The research papers will always be the main business of the journal, but each issue of Nature Physics also includes a 'magazine' section, of news and comment from the community. Some of these articles — including reviews of physics-related books, a play and even an opera — feature in our 'anniversary highlights', a collection of Nature Physics articles from the past year put together by the editors, and available online at http://www.nature.com/nphys/focus/1st_anniversary/index.html. All of the items featured there can be downloaded for free throughout October 2006.

It's been a great 12 months. Our sincere thanks go to all of our authors, of papers and of magazine material, and especially to those unsung heroes, the referees. We are indeed grateful, as a newly launched journal, for the support we have received from them.

We launched Nature Physics one year ago with the slogan “on your wavelength”. We hope we are. But there is one section of the journal that is languishing at the moment: Correspondence. There have been very few contributions from readers over the past year, but if you do have issues to discuss with the wider physics community, or anything to bring to the attention of the editors, let us know. The Nature Physics team can always be reached through the e-mail address naturephysics@nature.com. Let us know whether you like what you see.