Editorials at Nature Chemical Biology often end with a question or call to action: How can we best define the scientific scope of a single paper? How can small groups achieve big goals? Celebrate synthesis! Writing these editorials, as well as research highlights and the occasional journalistic article, gives us the opportunity to raise important issues and highlight content of relevance to the field. However, we also use these pieces to seek community feedback about central issues in chemical biology and our journal policies. To facilitate communication with improved timeliness and with the widest possible reach, Nature Chemical Biology is now on Twitter and Facebook.

Online media are changing the way we communicate. We previously highlighted the increased speed at which scientists communicate via blogs and other online newsfeeds, particularly to discuss primary research papers (Nat. Chem. Biol. 7, 65, 2011; Nat. Chem. Biol. 5, 601, 2009). However, scientific discourse consists of more than just a collection of articles, and many of the announcements and highlights that serve to connect the community are themselves well served by the informal tone and immediacy of online venues.

To take advantage of these online opportunities, we are using Twitter (@nchembio) and Facebook (http://on.fb.me/GWF4hb) to highlight content published in the journal as well as to draw attention to papers published elsewhere in the literature, topical news stories and opportunities in the field. We are linking to relevant discussions about scientific publishing and to conferences where you can meet our editors. On our Twitter feed, we also feature tweets identified by the editors' initials, allowing readers to get a broader perspective of specific editors' interests.

Perhaps most importantly, Twitter and Facebook provide a more casual forum to share your thoughts with the journal and the community at large, lowering the barriers to communication that typically only occurs at conferences or via individual contacts. After all, we best serve the community when we are informed about questions and concerns shared by scientists in the field.

We hope that you will find our social media content informative and engaging. Similarly, we encourage you to take part in the growing community by sharing your perspective and providing feedback on editorials or other projects at the journal. Thus, your call to action: Follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook and keep us posted.