Alert readers may notice that the journal has a new look this month, including additional color and new fonts to improve readability. Most of the journal's contents will remain the same, although the section previously called Letters to the Editor will now be called Correspondence. In addition, we are inviting submissions in two new formats as part of our redesign.

First, we will begin publishing occasional Technical Reports, which will present primary research data on new techniques that are likely to be influential. This format is not a review of technology, but its primary report in the literature. We prefer that Technical Reports should include a new biological discovery to prove the usefulness of the technique, but this is not a requirement. Refinements of previously published techniques are not normally appropriate for Technical Reports.

We will continue to publish Reviews and Commentaries, but we will distinguish them from our second new format, Perspectives. Commentaries represent the personal viewpoint of their authors on issues of broad scientific interest, and should be written in an accessible, non-technical style. They may address questions of policy, science and society or purely scientific issues. Commentaries may or may not be peer reviewed, depending on their contents.

In contrast, Reviews and Perspectives are more formal, scholarly formats, which are always peer reviewed. A Review is an authoritative, balanced survey of recent developments in a research field. While authors may propose a specific viewpoint, controversies in the field must be treated even-handedly. The scope of a Review should be broad enough that it is not dominated by the work of a single laboratory, including the authors' own work. Publication as a Review implies that the editors believe the article represents as a balanced evaluation of the field.

Some of the more technical pieces that would formerly have been called Commentaries will now be published as Perspectives. This new format is intended for scholarly reviews and discussions of the primary research literature that do not meet the criteria for a Review—either because the scope is too narrow, or because the authors are advocating a controversial position or a speculative hypothesis or discussing their own work. For example, two reviews advocating opposite sides in a research controversy would be published as Perspectives. We hope that this new format will allow us to bring more interesting ideas to the attention of our readers, and invite interested authors to send us a proposed outline by email to neurosci@natureny.com.