LAUSR

Articles that summarize knowledge are important contributions to science. Such articles should provide a single authoritative source of information relative to a particular scientific field or question. At Nucleic Acids Research , the editorial team realizes that rapid growth of potentially relevant papers increases the challenge of preparing review articles that will appeal to our broad readership. Recognizing these challenges, we have recently revised our guidelines (https://academic.oup.com/nar/pages/criteria scope) to make our expectations clear. First and foremost, we expect that authors demonstrate a passion for explaining their topic. Authors should see an important unmet need, a topic where researchers lack up-to-date syntheses of the best information on a subject. Authors should also have deep expertise. The scientific literature is vast. Not all papers are equal in quality. Authors should be able to identify the best, most rigorous studies. They should provide guidance to readers on the hallmarks of rigorous (or less than rigorous) research. Manuscripts should provide some guidance about challenges for future research. We welcome expert opinion, and we hope that authors will enjoy sharing their hard-earned authority to judge with the community. We note, however, that we continue to welcome more traditional review articles that summarize key findings in a field. Implicit in such papers, however, is the fact that authors possess the expertise to identify the most reliable data and set it into context. We are looking for papers that weave a field together, not present it as a series of unconnected findings. Critical Review and Perspective articles can be commissioned by the editorial team, but we also welcome suggestions from authors. We are happy to provide feedback to authors if we feel that a potential submission is not ready but might have the potential to be improved. In we present Critical Review Perspective. not typical review, because