Since it was launched in 2018, Nature Sustainability has gained popularity among sustainability scholars. The editorial team has seen the level and quality of submissions grow steadily since 2018 — an indicator of success that the editors are extremely proud of. The growth of submissions includes all types of content, original research (core content) as well as contributions such as Reviews, Perspectives and Comments to name the most popular ones (enriching content). We are extremely pleased that so many contributors keep considering Nature Sustainability as the best outlet to stimulate debate (via Comment articles), take stock of what we know (via Review articles) and present new ways of conceptualizing problems (via Perspective articles). But high submissions also carry a price. The journal’s editorial capacity cannot grow at the same pace, and we are now forced to reconsider our editorial practices related to the amount of enriching content we spontaneously receive. As our contributors know, we tend to invite most of the Comments, Reviews and Perspectives we publish, but we have always felt that it is important to remain open to proposals from the community. However, many authors simply decide to submit full articles under those categories rather than short proposals, expecting adequate and constructive editorial feedback. This has led to a growth of unsolicited enriching content above our capacity. As a result, the response time of editors has slowed down substantially, which is counter to our promise of providing prompt feedback to authors. Therefore, we have now made the decision to change our practice about this type of content. We ask the community to submit short proposals for Comments, Reviews and Perspectives (see our guide to authors for details here). Authors who wish to pitch any of those article types to Nature Sustainability, even if a full manuscript is ready, are now required to submit a brief proposal as a ‘presubmission inquiry’, and this is at present the only channel to propose a contribution. In the event of editorial interest, the team will invite the full submission for further evaluation as a second step. Our intention is to continue to offer potential authors the opportunity to discuss ideas with us, but with this practical change we hope to be able to respond with feedback much more promptly than we have done over the past few months. We want to renew our commitment to foster the sustainability discourse in the best possible way, and we hope that authors will be willing to take advantage of our current offer.

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