It is our aim that the primary research articles published in Nature Geoscience are of interest to a broad range of geoscientists. Indeed, this is one of the main editorial considerations when we select manuscripts for peer review and ultimately decide whether or not to publish a paper. Building on the original mission statement of Nature, we not only aim to publish important research, but to also facilitate the communication of this research to a wide scientific and public audience.

We have a number of tools at our disposal to communicate the science we publish. We work with authors to help make their papers as clear and accessible as possible. In addition to copy editing of the text and figure preparation, we pay particularly close attention to the titles and abstracts of research articles to ensure these clearly and accurately convey papers’ main findings.

The journal also utilizes other types of content to communicate primary research. For some of our papers, we commission News & Views articles to explain the findings (the ‘News’) and provide a critical evaluation of the work (the ‘Views’). These are written by other experts in the field. Authors also can highlight their papers in ‘Behind the Paper’ pieces posted on one of the Nature Portfolio Community sites, such as the Nature Portfolio Earth & Environment Community that launched earlier this year. Here authors can share the personal stories behind the research that are not captured in the papers themselves.

A few months ago, Nature Geoscience added the Research Briefing to its arsenal to help unpack the technical science in our papers for non-specialist readers. A Research Briefing is comprised of a one-page overview of the work written by the paper’s authors, plus comments on the paper’s significance from independent experts and the editors, and a short list of key related literature. For example, this issue features Research Briefings by Zhu Deng and Zhu Liu and Gary Egbert and Bo Yang on their papers about global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Cascadia subduction zone, respectively.

With every issue of Nature Geoscience, whether you flip through the print edition (yes, they still exist!) or peruse the occasional article online, we hope to both deliver and unpack great geoscience for all geoscientists.