We are about to start publishing the nineteenth volume of Nature Physics. Naturally, we seek to keep growing and evolving to continue to serve the community of research physicists in the best way that we can. So, as the new year starts, we would like to introduce the team of editors who will take the journal forward, and some of the new initiatives that we will be starting in the coming months.

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Most importantly, we are branching out into new areas of research. We hope to cover both medical physics and accelerator physics in more detail than we have before. But we shall also expand our scope to include physics education research and related topics.

We use the term physics education loosely to cover not only the study of good pedagogy of physics, but also social science research into how physics is done. The scope for the former is probably reasonably obvious — for example, how to best engage students in their learning, how to help them learn more effectively and how technology can assist with that. We will focus on research that is relevant to the university teaching environment, as this reflects the situation of the majority of our readers.

But the social science side is perhaps more difficult to define explicitly. In our vision, it will include research content that highlights and identifies solutions to the problem of why physics research is still predominantly done by males, and the systematic disadvantages faced by people of colour or those of minoritized sexual orientation or gender. We started down this road last year when we published a Perspective that highlighted gender imbalance in citations in physics papers (Nat. Phys. 18, 1161–1170; 2022).

As a journal, we believe that these issues are important to all physicists, and therefore we are keen to put high-quality research on those topics in front of our broad audience. Our editorial decisions on papers in this area will focus on highlighting work that we think is beneficial and constructive for the wider physics community.

In terms of editorial policy, we will be following other Nature Portfolio journals by integrating with the data repository service Figshare. This will make it easier for authors to share their data while submitting their manuscript if they wish to, and will help us to include the data in peer review in cases where this is important. More information can be found here: https://www.springernature.com/gp/authors/research-data/figshare-integration

Lastly, our editorial team has changed a little in the last few years, and so we would like to introduce the eight individuals who take care of the papers that our authors submit and the other content that we commission. We will do this roughly in ascending order of the length scale of the physics that they handle, and start with our champion of high-energy and particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics and cosmology, Stefanie Reichert. She joined the journal in 2018 after a research career focused around the LHCb Collaboration at CERN. She will also be leading our efforts in the direction of medical and accelerator physics.

Handling cold atoms and molecules along with much of our output on quantum simulation, Leonardo Benini brings his research expertise in quantum many-body physics to the team. He works closely with Richard Brierley, who handles quantum information and technology, and who has a research background in superconducting quantum computing.

Joining us in January 2023 will be Debarchan Das, who will handle the main part of our condensed-matter physics content. His expertise is in muon spin rotation spectroscopy in strongly correlated and topological materials and we are delighted that he is joining the team.

Taking care of much of our soft condensed-matter physics and materials physics content is Bart Verberck, back with the journal after spending a few years doing more big-picture administrative work. He originally joined Nature Physics in 2013 and brings a wealth of experience to the role.

Our biophysics and active matter content is championed by Elizaveta Dubrovina. Her research expertise is in fluid dynamics of lab-on-chip devices, and she will also be spearheading our efforts to cover physics education research and related topics.

Nina Meinzer continues to take care of our optics and photonics content, but now also has a role in coordinating the news, reviews, and analysis section of the journal. Their research centred around plasmonic and microwave metamaterials.

Finally, after our long-standing Chief Editor Andrea Taroni moved to another role earlier in 2022, David Abergel has stepped up to that position and has been leading the team since April. His background is in condensed-matter physics, and he will continue to handle some of that content for the journal.

So, the team is well equipped to move into the next year, to keep publishing the most broadly interesting physics papers we can, to represent and champion new areas of research, and to help our authors showcase their work to the widest possible audience.