When Nature Sustainability was conceived a few years back, in the publishing house there was excitement about the project as well as a bit of anxiety about the anticipated breadth of the journal’s scope. When the journal was announced publicly late in 2016, the response from the various relevant research communities was overwhelming — a significantly diverse audience transpired, very much in line with the original editorial aspiration. We then opened for submissions in 2017 and, over the months leading to the launch, that diversity of responses was matched by the diversity of fields submitting to us. We were pleased to see that happening. We finally launched our first issue last month and are now gradually building our pipeline of content.

Nature Sustainability aims to cover significant original research from a broad range of natural, social and engineering fields about sustainability, its policy dimensions and possible solutions — we are interested in research contributing to a better understanding of the Earth, social and technological systems and their interfaces. And beyond that, we welcome contributions from the humanities to deepen our understanding of how the concept of sustainable development emerged and evolved over time, and the extent to which its value basis and moral implications matter. And they matter for influencing the transformations in practices and institutions we so much need to ensure human and environmental wellbeing now and in the future. It’s surely an ambitious scope, and the editorial team has embraced the challenge with passion and determination. It’s exciting to see our content developing and the interest from the various communities involved seems to be growing as the number of new submissions is increasing. Yet, excited readers can be impatient. Some have enquired with us about the lack of representation of their own field in the first issue given our stated intentions.

We very much understand the concern and that’s why we are keen to reassure our readers that we intend to be faithful to our goal. We expect to be able to showcase most of the journal’s scope over the next coming months but we also know that it will take much longer to achieve coverage of the full breadth of what we aim to highlight through our pages. And here we want to encourage our readers from the natural, social and engineering communities, the humanities, and those who work across fields, to continue to submit their best work to us. This is how you will contribute to our mission — showcasing the most exciting, innovative and diverse sustainability-relevant research.