Evolution, accessibility and community: JEB's journey into 2026

2025 was another big year for Journal of Experimental Biology – we launched new initiatives, concluded others, and continued our ongoing commitment to supporting the experimental biology community. From introducing a new Perspective series and expanding our language accessibility policies to distributing over £135,000 in grants to early-career researchers (ECRs), it has been a year of both reflection and forward momentum. As we look back on 2025 and look forward to 2026, we are excited to share these developments with you and express our thanks to the community that makes JEB the journal it is today.After much consideration, we made the difficult decision to discontinue publishing the Outside JEB section of the journal at the end of 2025. When we launched Outside JEB in 2003, there were few venues for science communication to promote research published across comparative physiology and biomechanics. However, with the proliferation of social media and other digital platforms, there are now many more outlets for researchers to discover and share exciting developments in experimental biology, diminishing the unique role that Outside JEB once played.We know this news may be disappointing. But we want to emphasise that this decision reflects changes in the broader science communication landscape. We are grateful to all the ECRs who wrote these articles over the years, and it has been rewarding to watch them develop their writing skills, and some go on to progress into careers in science communication. A special thank you to Kathryn Knight who, from its inception, has been central to Outside JEB's success over the past two decades.Although Outside JEB is ending, we remain strongly committed to supporting science communication training for ECRs. We are actively exploring new initiatives, including expanding our workshop offerings at scientific conferences. In 2024, we successfully ran workshops on positive peer review and science communication at conferences including the Canadian Society of Zoologists and The Society for Experimental Biology annual meetings, and we plan to continue and expand these opportunities in the coming years. We have also encouraged former Outside JEB contributors to join The Company of Biologists’ preLights community, where they can continue to gain science communication experience by highlighting exciting preprints from across biology.We are delighted to introduce a new Perspective series highlighting the important role that field stations have played, and continue to play, in comparative physiology and biomechanics (Fig. 1A). Field stations have long contributed to groundbreaking research published in JEB, yet the role of these vital research infrastructure sites is often underappreciated. This series, written by authors with invaluable experience of the field stations featured, emphasises the rich history of experimental biology while also considering the future and broader impacts of these important facilities.The first article in the series, by Andrew Biewener, George Lauder and Stephanie Pierce, provides a good introduction to the concept of field stations in general, before focusing on Harvard University's Concord Field Station (Biewener et al., 2025), which has been foundational to advances in organismal physiology and biomechanics over the past 60 years. The article discusses the establishment of the Concord Field Station and its current facilities, before going on to consider its impact on our understanding of locomotion (both on the ground and in the air), locomotion energetics, musculoskeletal biomechanics and symmorphosis. The second article, by Katsufmi Sato and colleagues, considers important contributions made by the Otsuchi Coastal Research Center, particularly in relation to biologging research and the associated benefits for our understanding of animal physiology (Sato et al., 2026). We're excited to publish additional contributions to this series in 2026 – look out for Perspectives on Hopkins Marine Station and Friday Harbor Laboratories, among others – and encourage researchers working at field stations to consider submitting a Perspective about their site and its contributions to our understanding of comparative physiology and biomechanics.JEB regularly publishes themed issues on topics of broad interest to our readership. In 2024, we launched a new series on the theme of integrative biology, with a special issue focusing on the heart: ‘The Integrative Biology of the Heart’ (Joyce et al., 2024). This was followed in 2025 by the special issue ‘The Integrative Biology of the Gut’ (Fig. 1B), which explored the functional roles of this organ – from the cellular level to its interactions with other organs and tissues – and the importance of gut microbiota and included articles on the gut's capacity to respond to different diets and changing environmental conditions and climate change. We are grateful to our Guest Editors – Carol Bucking, Matthew Regan and John Terblanche – for their vision and hard work in putting together this excellent collection. For a broad overview of the issue, we encourage you to read their associated Commentary (Bucking et al., 2025).We are excited to announce that, this year, we will be publishing the next instalment in this series: ‘The Integrative Biology of Exercise’. This special issue considers the biology of exercise at all levels of organisation, across animal groups and research fields, including ecophysiology, metabolic and cardiorespiratory physiology, and biomechanics. We will be publishing novel, forward-looking papers that address all aspects of exercise from the cellular level right up to the effects that training and environmental conditions have on exercise capacity, spanning both vertebrate and invertebrate species. Many thanks to our Guest Editors – Erika Eliason, Christopher Guglielmo, Natalie Holt and Monica Daley – for coordinating this exciting upcoming issue.In addition to The Integrative Biology series, we continue to publish a special issue on the theme of the annual JEB symposium. Our symposium special issue published in 2025 – ‘Integrating Biomechanics, Energetics and Ecology in Locomotion’ (Fig. 1C) – sought to break down traditional boundaries that exist between the fields of locomotion biomechanics, energetics and ecology. A key objective of this special issue was to identify themes and concepts that unify these fields, with the intention of building interdisciplinary understanding by integrating laboratory and field studies through novel technologies. To get a sense of the breadth of the issue, read the Commentary by Guest Editors Andrew Biewener and Alan Wilson (Biewener and Wilson, 2025).Early in 2026, we will be publishing the special issue: ‘Sensory Perception in a Changing World’, which results from presentations and discussions at the 2025 JEB symposium. This issue, coordinated by Monitoring Editors Almut Kelber, Katie Gilmour and Sanjay Sane, takes a comparative approach to sensory control of physiological mechanisms and behaviours. It highlights the effects of anthropogenic changes on all levels, from sensory information and transduction via neuronal coding to stress responses and physiological and behavioural control.Our ‘Extraordinary Creatures’ Conversation interview series has quickly become one of our most popular features. Through these interviews, JEB authors share their passion for remarkable species and tell us about these incredible animals’ astonishing physiology and how they survive and thrive in some of Earth's most challenging environments.During 2025, we featured conversations with: Lauren O'Connell about poison frogs living in the rainforests of Central and South America, finding out how these colourful amphibians get their toxicity and the ingenious way they take care of their tadpoles; Eric Warrant about the bogong moth, which is exquisitely adapted for its annual 1000 km migration across Australia to aestivate in high-altitude caves and has deep cultural significance to the First Nations people of Australia; Doug Altshuler and Ken Welch about the amazing biomechanics and physiology of hummingbirds that allow them to hover during flight and to use nectar as their primary food source; and Rochelle Buffenstein and Thomas Park about the remarkable life span, unusual social structure and extreme hypoxia tolerance of the naked mole rat in East Africa (Fig. 2).These interviews beautifully illustrate the Krogh Principle in action – that for many physiological questions, there is an animal uniquely suited to address it – and we are delighted to continue this series in 2026; look out for Doug Fudge talking about jawless hagfish, the incredibly agile living fossils that tie themselves in knots and protect themselves from shark attacks by releasing large volumes of reinforced defensive slime in less than a second. The enthusiasm and expertise of the researchers we interview is infectious, and we hope these conversations inspire the next generation of comparative physiologists and biomechanics researchers.As part of our ongoing commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, JEB – along with its sister journals at The Company of Biologists – now welcomes authors to include a translation of their manuscript's abstract in an additional language. The additional language can be either the authors’ native language or that of the region where the work was carried out. For more details, see our additional language abstract policy at: https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/pages/journal-policies#abstract.This initiative recognises that science is a global endeavour and that making research more accessible to non-English speaking communities can increase its impact and reach. We're also now able to display non-Western character names alongside English versions in author lists (see https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/pages/journal-policies#characters). These policies reflect our commitment to supporting the international and diverse nature of our JEB community.Our ECR Spotlight interview series continues to be one of our favourite ways to promote emerging talent in experimental biology. In 2025, we featured over 120 ECR authors of papers published in the journal, highlighting not only their excellent research but also the remarkable diversity of our community and the animals and physiological systems they work on. We are proud to continue this series in 2026 and encourage you to explore these inspiring stories.In 2025, JEB and The Company of Biologists distributed over £135,000 in direct support to ECRs through three grant schemes. We awarded 96 Travelling Fellowships to graduate students and postdoctoral researchers making collaborative visits to other laboratories (Adhikari, 2025). Additionally, we funded several Research Partnership Kickstart Travel Grants (KS grants) for junior faculty staff travelling to other labs to develop and write major collaborative grant applications, and a number of ECR Visiting Fellowships (VF grants) enabling junior faculty to attract graduate students or postdoctoral fellows to undertake defined research projects in their labs for one to three months. This year, we have increased funding for the KS grants to £3000 per grant and expanded the eligibility of both the KS and VF grants to researchers that are within 7 years (instead of 5 years) of their first faculty position.These grants continue to have transformative impacts on ECR careers (Wright et al., 2025). Recipients have used Travelling Fellowships to learn new techniques, collect field data in remote locations and establish collaborations that have led to publications and subsequent grant funding. The junior faculty grants, which we launched in 2023 as part of our Centenary celebrations (Franklin and Handel, 2024), are helping to build the next generation of research programmes and collaborative networks in experimental biology. We're committed to continuing these schemes in 2026 and encourage all eligible ECRs to consider applying: see https://www.biologists.com/grants/.Members of the JEB Editorial Advisory Board play a vital role in JEB's operations, acting as ambassadors for the journal and providing invaluable expertise and advice to Editors on submitted manuscripts, helping assess a paper's suitability in terms of scope and quality and serving as reviewers and adjudicators.We are grateful to those Board members who stepped down at the end of 2025 for their valued service and dedication to the journal over the years: Verner Bingman (Bowling Green State University, USA), Simone Blomberg (The University of Queensland, Australia), Walter Federle (University of Cambridge, UK), Jessica Fox (Case Western Reserve University, USA), Hans Hoppeler (University of Bern, Switzerland), Ken Lukowiak (University of Calgary, Canada), Göran Nilsson (University of Oslo, Norway) and Michael O'Donnell (McMaster University, Canada).We are delighted to have recently welcomed several new members to the team (see Box 1). The diversity of expertise, geographic representation and career stages on our Board strengthens the journal and ensures we can continue to publish high-quality research across the breadth of comparative physiology and biomechanics. Box 1. New members of the JEB Editorial Advisory BoardAurore Avargues-Weber (CNRS/University of Toulouse, France)Kênia C. Bícego (São Paulo State University, Brazil)Vincent Careau (University of Ottawa, Canada)Yun-Wei Dong (Ocean University of China, China)Andrew Donini (York University, Canada)Sarah E. DuRant (University of Arkansas, USA)Shi-Jian Fu (Chongqing Normal University, China)Todd E. Gillis (University of Guelph, Canada)Robyn A. Grant (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)Michiyo Kinoshita (The Graduate University for Advanced Study, Japan)James C. Liao (University of Florida, USA)Kenneth J. Lohmann (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)Heath MacMillan (Carleton University, Canada)Karin Nordström (Flinders University, Australia)Eric A. Riddell (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)Edward P. Snelling (University of Pretoria, South Africa)Daniel Tomsic (University of Buenos Aries/CONICET, Argentina)See https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/pages/edboard for a full list of JEB Editors, Editorial Advisory Board and staff.As 2025 has now come to an end, we extend our gratitude to everyone who has contributed to JEB over the past year. To our authors: thank you for choosing JEB as the home for your research. To our reviewers (see supplementary information) and Editorial Advisory Board: your time, expertise and thoughtful assessments are the foundation of the journal's quality and integrity. We know that reviewing takes time away from your own research, teaching and personal lives, and we truly appreciate your commitment, especially as the number of manuscript submissions to JEB continues to rise.We are grateful to our Editors, who spend countless hours assessing manuscripts, making editorial decisions and working to maintain JEB's reputation for publishing outstanding research. Stepping down as Editors in 2025 were Pat Wright (Knight, 2026) and John Terblanche and joining us Emily Baird, Philipp Lehmann (Knight, 2025) and Graham Scott (Knight, 2026). Finally, we thank The Company of Biologists' in-house editorial and production staff who work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure smooth operations and high-quality production of the journal.Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, we are excited about the special issues in preparation, the continued growth of our ECR support programmes, and the ongoing evolution of the journal to meet the changing needs of the experimental biology community. The future of comparative physiology and biomechanics is in capable hands, and we look forward to publishing the discoveries that will shape our understanding of animal form and function in the years to come.