News & Comment

Trust is the theme of this year’s peer review week. Confidence in the most broadly used form of assessment, and often considered a quality seal, of scholarly communication, remains high. However, the continuously evolving means of disseminating science and the exponential growth of research output require journals to do more to reassure their authors and readers on the rigour of peer review, while maintaining an open dialogue aimed at improving the system.

Executable papers take transparency and openness in research communication one step further. In this comment, an early career researcher reports her experience of creating an executable paper as a journey through Open Science.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the invention of the laser. Here, we highlight a few of the many developments of a technology that has revolutionised our lives. To celebrate, our editors have chosen a collection of articles published in Communications Physics that showcase the breath of research and applications in this field.

What is the path towards a physical theory of complex networked systems? With an eye to the historical maths-physics duality, and an outlook towards the future, this commentary discusses promises and challenges accompanying the convergence of formal graph theory and data-inspired network science.

Communications Physics is 2 years old. To celebrate, we look back at our achievements and put together a collection of our editors’ favourite papers. We will renew this collection over the months to share with our community what we like the most.