There is no doubt that keeping up with scientific literature has become a challenge. arXiv submissions alone exceeded 15,000 per month at the end of 2020. Physicists who want to keep up with the latest advances in their own field and related topics have increasingly been relying on non-primary literature such as research highlights, features and opinion pieces. There is a varied offering of such content from journals, magazines and blogs, and over the past two years the Nature Reviews Physics team has been experimenting with different types of content to identify which are most useful to our readers to make sense of the ever-growing literature. We uncovered three main themes that we believe complement the reviews we publish, providing additional context and insight.

In line with the focus Nature Reviews Physics puts on techniques and methodology, we wish to provide our readers with additional technical resources in the form of our technical Comments (introducing new projects or instruments, discussing methodology), technology Features (covering big facilities construction, management or upgrades) and — making debut in this issue — Tools of the Trade. Tools of the Trade are short contributions from early career scientists that introduce new tools or give tips on using established methods. The tools can be experimental, theoretical or computational with a focus on open source software.

Another type of content which received positive feedback from the readers is in depth analysis which is delivered through three articles types unique to Nature Reviews: Year in Review, Viewpoint and Down to business. Year in Review offer a critical discussion of a series of key results published in the past year. In 2020, we explored experimental signatures of anyons or nickelate superconductivity. Viewpoints are collections of short contributions from leaders in the field discussing a specific scientific or social issue. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the quantum Hall effect, we published a Viewpoint in which scientists who have made key discoveries relating to the quantum Hall effect ponder its importance. Down to business are Comment-like articles discussing patents, commercialization or technology transfer.

Nature Reviews Physics does not restrict its coverage of physics to tools and scientific insights, but also includes timely discussions of societal issues that are relevant to the physics community. We engage with such topics through opinion, editorial and short news pieces. For example, World View articles are short opinion pieces based on personal experience that resonate strongly with readers. A World View piece last year called on physicists to engage in a meaningful way with the efforts to model the Covid-19 pandemic. We also publish Viewpoints exploring the experiences of physicists in different geographic regions such as Asia and Africa.

Over the past two years, the Nature Reviews Physics team has been experimenting with different types of content to identify which are most useful to our readers to make sense of the ever-growing literature

Over the past twenty years reading habits have changed1 and the majority of physicists now find their reads through arXiv, recommendation engines or social media. Journal issues have less visibility, but we hope our readers can still discover and make most use of the rich content we offer in addition to the review articles. To this end we promote our content through social media and our website has been recently revamped to highlight the monthly issues and enhance navigation. Whether through Twitter, E-alerts or regular visits to our website, we hope readers find and enjoy our content.