Journals that aim to take an overview of research have a long and honourable history. The world's longest-running journal, the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, was at its outset in 1665 arguably a review journal of sorts, aimed as it was at “giving some ACCOUNT of the present undertakings, studies, labours of the INGENIOUS in many considerable parts of the WORLD”.

Nature only began to publish review articles with any frequency in the 1970s, but now Nature and all of the monthly Nature journals see them as an essential part of their content. Feedback suggests that readers welcome Nature's most recent development in this direction: the Nature Insight collections that appear about once a month.

But Nature's publishers have taken a significant step further. On 1 October, visitors to http://www.nature.com/reviews/ will find three new journals, under the banner of Nature Reviews, devoted to overviews of recent highlights in genetics, neuroscience and molecular cell biology. Information on these journals can be found elsewhere in this issue.

What should perhaps be emphasized above all is the combination of quality of authors and the depth of attention given to the review articles by their editors, in terms of topics and content, readability, addition of complementary material on the web, and in the figures and web-based animation. The journals' philosophy is fully in keeping with the tradition of Nature journals, by which much of the creativity starts — and the buck stops — with the editors themselves, while the authors deliver the clout.

With many questions being asked about the addition of value by publishers, we intend for these partnerships between editors and authors of reviews to represent outstandingly positive examples.