On 16 September 2025, the first meeting of the International Scientific Avisory Board (ISAB) of the Natural Science Review journal, published by the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, took place at the JINR International Conference Centre in a hybrid format.

Co-chair of the Board, Scientific Leader of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) Yuri Oganessian opened the meeting. “Our task is to create a journal that will perform several functions at once. First of all, it should be interesting and sought-after. Lively interest is the driving force behind the work of any researcher,” Yuri Oganessian said.

ISAB Co-chair, JINR Director, RAS Academician Grigory Trubnikov presented the key concepts of the journal to the Board members. Natural Science Review is an online peer–reviewed Diamond Open Access journal. Issues are published quarterly, while articles appear on the journal’s website immediately after acceptance for publication and literary editing. Natural Science Review covers a wide range of multidisciplinary scientific topics, in particular, physics, mathematical and computer sciences, chemistry, ecology, and life and Earth sciences.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the journal and a BLTP leading researcher Elena Kolganova spoke on the key results achieved since the launch of Natural Science Review. Three issues have been published since December 2024, and articles for the fourth are being accepted until the end of September. Obligatory registration procedures in the Russian Federation have been passed. The website has been launched, and articles are available in PDF and HTML. Elena Kolganova also presented statistics on citations, author affiliations, and thematic content of articles. It was noted that one of the main tasks for the journal is to expand the geography of authors, which is an important factor for the inclusion of Natural Science Review in the Scopus and Web of Science databases.

The meeting participants discussed the prospects for further development of the editorial policy of Natural Science Review. Proposals were submitted for consideration to publish selected conference proceedings and annual collaboration reports in addition to the existing TDRs (technical design report) and CDRs (conceptual design report). The possibility of introducing obligatory preprint of an article submitted to the Natural Science Review in the arxiv.org archive was also discussed. This could assist in disseminating information about the article and the place of its publication in relevant communities. The prospect of introducing updated versions of review articles was mentioned. In addition, the idea of accepting articles with experiment proposals was discussed.

A proposal to use the software repository of the Laboratory of Information Technologies at JINR for storing intellectual property results sent for publication in the Natural Science Review was also considered. It is assumed that such results should be accompanied by a knowledge-intensive annotation in the form of an article.

The Board members underlined the particular importance of strengthening efforts to popularise the journal in the JINR Member States and attract new members of the editorial board and the ISAB outside the Institute.

The event gathered 45 people, including members of the International Scientific Advisory Board, the Editorial and Technical Teams. In addition, the meeting was attended by the Directors of the Institute’s laboratories and members of the JINR Scientific Council, which took place on 16-17 September.