Editorials

Strong governance, accelerated action, and empowered communities are essential to avoid cascading Earth system tipping points and achieve lasting, transformative change.

Lockdowns loomed large when Communications Earth & Environment launched 5 years ago. Since restrictions lifted, we have seen a push-back on science as well as an AI revolution. In response, the global community of Earth and environmental researchers must stand together, while remaining open-minded.

Obituaries of scientists are much more often about men than women. At Communications Earth & Environment, we are initiating a series of articles highlighting the lives and work of women scientists, aiming to inspire the next generation with their stories and career paths.

The lived experiences of the full diversity of people facing climate change must be taken into account for climate adaptation to be effective and to avoid maladaptation.

Whether diets will evolve through social interventions to move closer to sustainable agriculture is being investigated in a growing and promising area of research.

For all peer reviewed articles submitted from 23^rd January 2023, we will publish the editor decision letters, reviewer reports and author responses, together with the published paper. Reviewers can choose to remain anonymous or reveal their identity.

In 2021, 1348 reviewers wrote a peer review report for Communications Earth & Environment. We would like to express our thanks to all of them.

Authors from non-English speaking countries can feel disadvantaged if they are not fluent in English. At Communications Earth & Environment, we disregard language imperfections in our decisions, and ask our reviewers to do the same—as long as the science is clear.

Communications Earth & Environment’s first anniversary marks an important milestone on our path to maturity. We would like to share and celebrate how much the journal has grown, quantitatively and qualitatively.

At Communications Earth & Environment, we are immensely grateful for the time and effort our reviewers invest into improving submitted papers. We will henceforth celebrate some of our outstanding reviewers on our homepage.

We sincerely thank the 713 reviewers who gave up their time to write peer review reports for the manuscripts submitted to Communications Earth & Environment in 2020.

Our aim at Communications Earth & Environment is to disseminate and debate the science of our planet and our Solar System. Together with the community of scientists, we can create an open resource of data, analyses and insights that will deepen our understanding of the Earth and beyond.