The Energy to Power the Future

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Joule. We are launching Joule to be a distinctive home for outstanding and insightful research, analysis, and ideas addressing a key global challenge: the need for more sustainable energy.Our guiding motivation in launching Joule is that meeting this challenge requires harnessing the ideas and experience of a broad coalition of researchers, spanning disciplines and scales of research.We see Joule as a home and a focus for energy researchers around the world, bringing together communities with diverse experience across materials science, chemistry, biotechnology, engineering, physics, economics, analysis, and policy.Importantly, Joule purposefully looks to bridge scales of research as well as disciplines. Joule will link fundamental breakthrough science to real-world impact and applications.Our aim is encapsulated well by the words of James Prescott Joule, a 19th century pioneer in the physical sciences whose discipline-spanning work (including in brewing) led to the development of the first law of thermodynamics, and after whom the SI derived unit of energy is named. In 1840 James Joule wrote,“My object has been, first to discover correct principles and then to suggest their practical development.”Motivated by these words, our journal will consciously emphasize the “bigger picture” in energy research. We will look both forward and back, and indeed up and down, spanning scales from fundamental laboratory research into energy conversion and storage up to impactful analysis at the global level. We are mindful of how the sustainability, scalability, cost, and viability of different research and technologies depend on analyzing the whole life cycle. We will shine a light on areas we feel need more attention, such as resource availability.Of course, Joule has not been created in a vacuum but is the product of much thought and preparation as the newest journal in the Cell Press portfolio. Cell Press is a world-renowned publisher, with titles including Cell, Neuron, and Immunity. All Cell Press titles share a mission to publish exceptional research and promote the cross-pollination of important ideas. Cell Press has formidable success and experience with supporting and coalescing communities in the life sciences, bringing researchers together to address important questions in their fields. This experience led to the launch in 2016 of our sister journal Chem, the first Cell Press journal in the physical sciences. Joule will serve the energy research communities in the way that Cell does for the life sciences and Chem does for the chemical sciences. As you would expect for any Cell Press journal, we will offer outstanding author service. The Joule Editorial team is experienced, passionate, and committed to the highest ethical standards. We offer an evaluation process that is very rigorous, while remaining efficient, and fair to all. Supporting our efforts here are a diverse and distinguished global Advisory Board with world-leading expertise across our wide scope.Joule is committed not just to publishing groundbreaking results and conceptual advances, but further to highlighting and amplifying the implications, challenges, and opportunities of new results to different groups working across the entire spectrum of energy research. We will provide authors with global visibility, utilizing the recognized excellence and experience of Cell Press to inform and engage the widest audience.As you will see from the articles published in this and in our future monthly issues, we think carefully about how to present and publish research in Joule to maximize its accessibility and impact. Joule publishes all original research in a single Research Article format. These have been designed for ease of reading, with a clear one-column layout. Moreover, a key feature of all Joule Research Articles is the inclusion of a Context & Scale box. Mindful of our broad readership, this accessible summary communicates to non-experts the context and significance of the results (including implications at different scales) and the challenges and opportunities in scaling up or down the conclusions presented.We are also pioneering new, dynamic and immersive ways of presenting scientific results. Two articles in this issue (Jacobson et al. and Yang et al.) contain enhanced Figure360s in the online articles, where the authors talk through crucial figures in more depth. In future issues we will feature the Backstory behind important new research, giving authors the opportunity to explain the motivations and how it came about. We also look to trial and develop innovations in peer review, in organizing research data, and in engagement with our articles.In addition to original research, we recognize the importance of providing an authoritative overview of recent advances, and technical commentary on current activities and challenges in areas of topical interest. A Joule Review provides a broad, balanced, insightful, and accessible overview of a research field. A Perspective article is a shorter, focused, and more personal analysis of a field or topic.Underlining our forward-looking nature and aims to connect all who are investigating and analyzing the challenges—scientific, technical, economic, policy, and social—of providing sustainable energy solutions, we also offer a lively range of more discursive “front matter” articles. A Future Energy article is a forward-looking platform to showcase developing research areas that show promise in next-generation technologies and solutions, commenting on key challenges and opportunities and speculating on how the field might develop. Commentary articles are a platform for topical, evidence-supported opinions related to energy and of pressing interest across Joule’s readership. Finally, Previews highlight one or more important research articles published in the same issue of Joule or recently published elsewhere, placing the results in context for a community-spanning audience. Full details of Joule’s article types are available at www.cell.com/joule/article-types.I hope you enjoy reading the stimulating articles in our first issue, and indeed that you continue to follow, read, engage with, and contribute to Joule. If you have any questions, suggestions, or feedback about Joule, or if you would like to discuss a potential submission, we are keen to hear from you. Please do contact us at joule@cell.com or visit the Joule website (www.cell.com/joule/home).