The New Scientist was founded in 1956 and is a weekly magazine. It is a free international science magazine about recent developments in science and technology, and its website was launched in 1996 with daily news about the science and technology world. The magazine is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but is widely circulated by scientists and non-scientists alike, and often publishes commentary on environmental issues such as climate change. It is often considered to be a popular, high-level academic journal on par with SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN.