Inaugural editorial of Discover Viruses

Viruses are thought to be the most abundant, widespread, and diverse organisms on Earth.These obligate intracellular symbionts can be found in every environment, from the deep sea to the sky, and they are capable of infecting every domain of life (eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and archaeans) with some of them even having the ability to parasitize other viruses.While hundreds of thousands of viruses exist, only a minority of them have been discovered or characterized, and only a tiny proportion have been studied in detail.Even for some of the best-studied viruses, the entire host spectrum, geographic distribution, pathogenic potential, and ecological roles have not yet been fully elucidated.While some viruses can cause serious disease in their host(s) and have the potential for host-switching, being responsible for (re)emerging infections, others are believed non-pathogenic or may even have a beneficial effect on their host.Besides, viruses can be engineered for our benefit (e.g., gene-therapy).Hence, virology is a vast field as it encompasses the study of all viruses and, among the many possible topics, their relationships with their hosts, including mechanisms of pathogenesis and transmission, their ecology and distribution, their genetic features and molecular evolution, the interconnection with other microorganisms, and methodological aspects used to study or engineer them.Discover Viruses aims to be a platform to gather developments and advancements across all fields relevant to virology, including viruses infecting any type of host, and present them for reading to anyone interested.So, we welcome you all to Discover Viruses, launched in February 2024, as part of the Discover series within Springer Nature.Discover Viruses is a fully open access, peer-reviewed journal that supports multidisciplinary research and policy developments across all fields relevant to virology, including human and other vertebrate, plant, invertebrate, bacterial, archaeal, and fungal viruses.Being a broad scope journal, it aims to be a resource for researchers, policymakers, and the general public by addressing recent advances in the field of virology and its uses in research development and society.Further, as a fully open access journal, we are committed to ensure that our research is highly discoverable and instantly available globally and to everyone.We aim to help good research find a home for publication.