Abstract

Through their editorialising, leading international science journals such as Nature and Science shape and interpret the changing roles of science in society and exert considerable influence on scientific priorities and practices. I examine this ‘boundary work’ by examining 50 years of editorialising in these two journals through a longitudinal frame analysis of nearly 500 editorials. Although there are broad similarities between Nature and Science in the waxing and waning of editorialising attention given to climate change, there are also significant differences in how the challenges of climate change are framed. These differences can be attributed to these journals’ different institutional histories, place attachments and editorial styles. How Nature and Science editorialise climate change depends on where they are situated, both literally and metaphorically.