• Editorial
• Published: 29 January 2026

Nature Computational Science volume 6, page 1 (2026)Cite this article

We celebrate the fifth anniversary of Nature Computational Science and reflect on how we have engaged with the research community.

Time flies. Somehow, it’s been already five years since our launch. Back in 2021, we were excited to put together the first issue of Nature Computational Science, and even more excited about the positive response that we got from the computational science community about having a journal within the Nature Portfolio family dedicated to this growing field. From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to celebrate the diversity of areas covered by computational science and bring all practitioners and enthusiasts from these areas together. Fast-forwarding to 2026, it has been rewarding to turn this goal into reality by publishing computational science advances in varying domains, from biological and physical sciences to environmental and social sciences.

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One of our goals has also been to highlight topics of importance to our community in order to foster discussion among scientists on the current challenges and future avenues of research. Different Focus issues have been launched with this purpose and on different subjects, such as digital twins, sustainability, metamaterials, quantum mechanics, large language models, and computational psychiatry, to name a few. We have also created Collections — sometimes in collaboration with other journals — to invite researchers to submit their papers within areas of interest to the journal, such as neuromorphic computing, physics-informed machine learning, computational social science, and molecular design and discovery. We will surely continue to work on these initiatives and engage with our research community on timely topics in the many years to come.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary, we are launching a Series that will focus on different research areas that we have published in the past five years. The Series includes not only papers published at Nature Computational Science that our editorial team selected as having had high impact on their respective communities, but also monthly Comments (one per issue in 2026) from experts discussing the pressing challenges of different fields. The first Comment — published in this January issue and written by Omer San and colleagues — discusses the timely topic of digital twins and their evolution from analytical instruments to autonomous systems.

In addition to publishing high-impact content, we are also committed to providing the best possible service to both reviewers and authors, and over the last five years we have implemented different initiatives to better serve our community. Examples include transparent peer review, which gives authors the option to publish reviewers’ comments, authors’ rebuttals and editorial decision letters alongside their paper, and more seamless support for code peer review — in collaboration with the cloud-based platform Code Ocean — that makes code deposition easier for authors and code access and reporting more streamlined for reviewers. Our commitment to our authors and readers also comes through the core editorial values that guide our work, including research openness and reproducibility, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. Needless to say, we will continue to support open science and foster a culture of diversity and inclusion in our communities.

Nature Computational Science is turning five, but this is just the beginning. We wanted to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all of our authors, reviewers, and readers who have contributed so much to the success of our journal. Here’s to many more years!

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Turning five. Nat Comput Sci 6, 1 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-026-00952-8

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Published: 29 January 2026

Version of record: 29 January 2026

Issue date: January 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43588-026-00952-8