Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG), UK, has announced the launch a new primary research journal, Nature Climate Change. Slated for release in October 2009, the journal will be the latest in the portfolio of physical sciences titles launched by NPG over the past five years.
A first for a Nature-branded journal, Nature Climate Change will extend into socio-economic research as well as the natural sciences with the aim of putting the research it publishes into a wider scientific, economic and political context. Like its sister titles, Nature Climate Change will seek to publish the best research from around the world and will have a strong online component. The journal will provide in-depth coverage of all aspects of the Earth's changing climate, including studies of the impacts of climate change as well as climate change itself. Nature Geoscience, a Nature publication launched in January 2008, has published a number of significant climate related studies, generating mainstream media interest. Complementary to Nature Climate Change, Nature Geoscience's remit is the entire spectrum of the Earth Sciences, which will continue to include the understanding of the complex scientific mechanisms behind a planet's changing climate.
Climate change being one of the key issues of the twenty-first century, there is a need to bring together scientific observation and models with an understanding of how human society affects climate change, and vice versa. In addition to this new initiative from NPG, publishers including Wiley-Blackwell, SAGE and Gale have also launched new climate change resources in the recent past. In March this year, Wiley-Blackwell announced a collaborative project with the Royal Meteorological Society and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) to launch a new online publication, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change. Also in the same month SAGE launched a new three-volume encyclopaedia of Global Warming and Climate Change.
