The continuing development and expansion of Acta Crystallographica Section B

Two large special issues were published in 2014: the first of these, on Crystal Engineering and helmed by Guest Editor Andrew D. Bond (Bond, 2014), appeared in the February issue; the second in August was on Non-ambient Crystallography, with Guest Editors David G. Billing and Andrzej Katrusiak (Billing & Katrusiak, 2014). The special issues helped promote the message of the widening scope of the journal. We had a 64% increase in the number of pages published in the journal, from 633 in 2013 to 1036 in 2014. Further special issues are in progress for 2015–2016, including those on Energy Materials (Guest Editors Simon Parsons, Richard Walton and Karena Chapman), Crystal Structure Prediction (Guest Editors Graeme Day and Carl Henrik Görbitz) and others being planned.

In 2014 the journal published its first Research Perspective article, `Aperiodic crystals and superspace concepts' by Ewald Prize winners Ted Janssen and Aloysio Janner (Janssen & Janner, 2014). A research perspective is an article where the main or sole author is an established leader in a particular field and such articles are expected to review the development of that field, with a strong focus on the author's own contributions to it. The journal will normally publish one article in this category per year and plans for 2015 are currently underway. Leading scientists are welcome to write to us with suggestions and a 500-word outline.

The journal published two feature articles in 2014: `Crystalline metal-organic frameworks (MOFs): synthesis, structure and function' (Dey et al., 2014) and `Crystallographic studies of gas sorption in metal-organic frameworks' (Carrington et al., 2014). Future feature articles include `MOFs under high pressure' by Stephen Moggach, `Prospects for crystal engineering' by Christer Aakeröy and contributions by several high-profile speakers at the Montreal IUCr Congress.

Commentaries on some outstanding articles are now appearing regularly at the front of the journal, and we would like to thank the authors of these for their rapid and valuable contributions. Other articles have been highlighted by means of regular news features on the IUCr homepage. The Acta B homepage will be redesigned for 2015, to allow more extensive coverage of recent news items and to highlight outstanding articles and the most cited papers from the journal.

Acta B has an established reputation for publishing work in fields such as aperiodic structures and high-pressure crystallography, and we are working to expand our coverage, including in other areas of materials science and crystal engineering. The broad scope of the journal is indicated by the keywords at //journals.iucr.org/b/journalhomepage.html . Acta B has much to offer authors, including speed of publication and high but practical technical standards.

The journal will be represented at a number of meetings in 2015, including at the 12th International Conference on Materials Chemistry (MC12, York, UK), the Annual Meeting of the American Crystallographic Association (Philadelphia) and at the 29th European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM29, Rovinj, Croatia). You can see a full list of the meetings where IUCr Journals will be displayed by following the link to the meetings on the respective journal homepage.

We note that the number of papers where the authors have opted for open access is on the rise: such papers are amongst the most downloaded for the journal.

Finally, we are delighted to welcome several new Co-editors to the Acta B board: Radovan Černý (University of Geneva, Switzerland), Miao Du (Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, People's Republic of China), Janusz Lipkowski (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland), Andrzej Katrusiak (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland) and Pierangelo Metrangolo (Politecnico di Milano, Italy). We look forward to working with them to develop and strengthen the journal. Several Acta B Co-editors retired at the IUCr Congress last August and we take this opportunity to record our great appreciation of their hard work and dedication on behalf of the journal: the retirees are Carl Henrik Görbitz, Jim Kaduk, Keiichiro Ogawa, Urszula Rychlewska and Mark Spackman. The full editorial board can be seen at //journals.iucr.org/b/services/editors.html . We look forward to another successful year for Acta B covering papers from our broadened scope, ensuring a leading position for the journal and promising our authors an efficient and high-quality publication experience.