A chronic gap in the spectrum of Nature research journals is now to be filled. Following the launch in 1992 of the first such journal, Nature Genetics, we have progressively served several key disciplines in biology with such community-oriented publications. They seem to have fulfilled their initial goals, with all of them achieving a healthy subscription base and most of them lying at the top of their respective categories for impact factor.

But for too long, one group has been left without such a journal: molecular biologists. That label does not do justice to the diversity of interests of those who study biological phenomena at the molecular level. But many of them will, we hope, be pleased to find a new outlet for their outstanding papers in a new title to be launched at the beginning of January: Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

In developing this publication, it has been important to preserve the great strengths of its predecessor, Nature Structural Biology, which has had the highest impact factor in its category — the new journal will carry forward its impact factor of 11.8. As its title indicates, the new journal will continue to serve its traditional community by including in its scope papers whose main message is structural.

But as its launch issue will demonstrate, it will also publish a significant proportion of papers that have no structural component at all, but which fall within the general goal of understanding biological processes at a molecular and mechanistic level. The emphasis of the journal will be on in vitro studies. The scope will include processes in the cell nucleus: DNA replication, repair, recombination, transcription, RNA processing and chromatin structure and remodelling. It will also include molecular-level studies of translation, signal transduction and protein folding, processing and degradation (for a complete list, see http://www.nature.com/nsmb). Analysis beyond a single component in a process and of coupling between cellular processes will also be welcome.

The number of pages in the journal and the number of editors on its staff are both being increased to accommodate this significant extension of its scope. Any author who is interested in submitting a paper to Nature Structural & Molecular Biology should visit http://www.nature.com/nsb/esubmission/index.html.