A Nature Reviews journal is more than a collection of high-quality review and commentary articles: we strive to provide context and highlight important topics for our community. Here are some of the themes from this year.

Artificial intelligence. Our chief editor Iulia Georgescu ran a panel discussion with The Alan Turing Institute in April on science in the age of large language models. We also published a Viewpoint on the same topic and an Editorial on how to avoid misleadingly anthropomorphic language when writing about artificial intelligence. We continued to add content to the ongoing Collection on pervasive machine learning in physics.

Credit: Susanne Harris/Springer Nature Limited

Scientific best practices. In our February issue we published a Viewpoint article in which scientists from seven multi-user facilities discuss the status of data sharing in their communities, along with an Editorial highlighting how much variation there is within physics when it comes to data sharing. In June, our senior editor Ankita Anirban organized a joint workshop at Graphene 2023 with Nature Communications senior editor Antonio Fornieri, where researchers from academia and industry discussed the reproducibility demands on 2D devices. In August, we published an interview with Raphaël Lévy, one of the principal investigators on a project that explores how, when and why science fails to self-correct. In September, we celebrated Peer Review Week. This year we published an Editorial grappling with the question of how physics referees and editors may need to adapt to a rapidly changing world, in which big science and big data are on the rise, traditional disciplinary walls are shifting and breaking down, and machine learning is becoming pervasive.

Sustainability. In March we launched our Collection on physics and sustainability, coordinated by our senior editor Zoe Budrikis. The collection gathers articles from across the physical sciences Nature Reviews journals on how physics research is directly contributing to environmental sustainability goals, what physics can reveal about aspects of Earth’s climate such as sea ice, and small and large ways to make physics research more sustainable. We continue to add to the Collection regularly.

Then and now. We like to look back at important milestones in physics and explore their present-day impact. In May, we celebrated 15 years since the discovery of topological insulators by putting together a Collection on topological matter and publishing a series of Research Highlights on topological insulators, each illustrated (fittingly, and mouth-wateringly) with photos of baked goods that look like devices and band structures. In June we celebrated 100 years since Louis de Broglie’s publications on matter waves that would lead to quantum mechanics, publishing a Viewpoint on the foundations of quantum physics, and Reviews on quantum teleportation and on applications of single photons to quantum communication and computing, quantum metrology, biology and quantum foundations. October is the Nobel Prize month, and we celebrated by inviting editors and journalists across Nature Portfolio to write short In Retrospect articles about the physics Nobelists from 100, 80, 60, 40 and 20 years ago.

Having fun. Each year we publish an April 1st Editorial, highlighting a fun area of physics research. This year, we shared some of our favourite phenomena relating to fizzy drinks. In November, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who by publishing a quiz to challenge our readers to spot the real physics terms amid the science fiction.

We are proud of what we’ve been able to achieve this year, and are grateful to all our authors, referees and readers who make it possible. We look forward to another year serving the physics community in 2024.