Cambridge Prisms: Extinction, after 4 years

Cambridge Prisms: Extinction was launched to provide an open, synthetic forum for research on the patterns, processes and consequences of extinction. Four years on, the release of the journal's first impact factor offers a useful moment to look back at what has begun to take shape and to look ahead to what it should now become. The early content shows a young journal whose first visible scholarly impact has been driven largely by synthesis. That was deliberate: a review-led beginning helped define the journal's intellectual map, draw together conservation biology, palaeontology, modelling, policy, social science and the humanities, and create pathways for more primary and data-driven work. The next stage should build on that foundation through more empirical research and through Extinction Accounts, a new article format designed to analyse individual extinctions.