The world was rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic this year, but researchers rose to all manner of challenges.

This year yielded stunning images of transparent human organs, apex predators, and the world’s response to the ongoing pandemic.

The pandemic spurred innovation in a variety of ways, from CRISPR-based diagnostics to cell biology benchwork at home.

The scientific community bid farewell to researchers who furthered the fields of molecular biology, virology, sleep science, and immunology, among others.

The Retraction Watch team takes a look at the most important publishing mistakes this year.

This year’s most captivating illustrations tell stories from the micro scale—such as newborn neurons in the adult brain and bacteria in the infant gut—to the scale of entire ecosystems, including reintroduced predators and rising seas.

We all deserve something nice this year.

Publishers’ efforts to reduce “leakage,” funder-driven open-access schemes, the growth of academic publishing in China, and more.

Licensing negotiations between libraries and publishers continued, a radical open-access plan made changes, and the flaws of some publishing tools and techniques came to light.