PRESS RELEASES

London, 23 November 2017

Three new titles will join the Nature Research portfolio of journals in January 2019: Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Metabolism and Nature Reviews Physics.

Nature Machine Intelligence will publish and report on the best research in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, including human-robot interaction, machine learning and cognitive computing. It will also provide a platform for discussing the impact of machine intelligence on science, society and industry. The new journal will be led by Chief Editor Dr Liesbeth Venema, who previously led Nature's growth in the fields of pure and applied physics, with a specific focus on AI and robotics in recent years.

"The technologies underpinning artificial intelligence and robotics have made huge leaps in the past decade, bringing exciting applications, such as self-driving cars, AI-led medical diagnosis and intelligent digital home assistants," said Dr Venema, adding: "With many more ground-breaking opportunities to come, we also need to consider the ethical, social and economic issues as AI technologies begin to influence almost every area of science and society."

Nature Research has published some of the most exciting recent advances in the field of machine intelligence, including the AlphaGo AI program that learnt the game of Go and beat professional human players for the first time, and the updated version of the program, AlphaGo Zero, that taught itself to play Go from scratch — and beat the original AlphaGo.

"The machine intelligence field — covering both AI and robotics — has grown rapidly in recent years and we at Nature Research envisage that this growth in machine intelligence research will continue at a frantic pace. With Nature Machine Intelligence, we hope to provide an outlet for exceptional AI and robotics research, in particular cross-disciplinary research, while bringing our exemplary author services to more researchers than ever before," Dr Venema said.

Nature Machine Intelligence will complement the strong and growing portfolio of Nature-branded research journals in theoretical and applied physics, as well as Springer Nature's wider portfolio of book, journal and conference proceeding titles.

Jumping from digital life to biological life, Nature Metabolism will publish exceptional research and commentary in the rapidly developing fields of metabolism and metabolic health, including cellular metabolism, ageing, circadian rhythms, dietary health, as well as metabolic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Dr Christoph Schmitt, a former Senior Editor and Team Manager at Nature Communications, will be the Chief Editor, and both he and the journal will be based out of Nature Research's new Berlin hub.

In addition to primary research, Nature Machine Intelligence and Nature Metabolism will publish Reviews, Commentaries, Features, Perspectives, and News & Views pieces covering the many issues of interest to their respective communities.

Finally, Nature Reviews Physics will publish high-quality technical reference, review and commentary articles in all areas of fundamental and applied physics. The editorial team will be led by Chief Editor Dr Iulia Georgescu, previously a Senior Editor at Nature Physics.

Nature Reviews Physics will be the third physical sciences journal to join the Reviews family. Alongside the traditional article types, such as Reviews, Perspectives and Commentaries, the journal will also provide high-quality roadmaps, technical reviews focussing on techniques, instrumentation, software and data analysis, and expert advice reflecting the latest developments and trends in all areas of physics.

Nature Machine Intelligence, Nature Metabolism and Nature Reviews Physics will be online-only, subscription-based journals that will open for submissions in 2018, with their first issues published in January 2019. As with all Nature Research journals, these three new titles will be characterised by a fair and rigorous peer-review process, high standards of copy-editing and production, swift publication and editorial independence.

ENDS

Notes for editors:

Contact:

Travis Taylor
Press Officer, Nature Research, UK
E: travis.taylor@nature.com
T: +44 20 7843 4658

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