New developments for Acta Crystallographica Section C

A major development for the IUCr in 1999 was the launch of the new and innovative electronic service Crystallography Journals Online. I am pleased to report that from the start of 2000, Section C will be available in full-text format within this service. All articles, including the new category of electronic papers, which supersedes CIF-access papers, are now available in HTML and PDF formats, and are richly hyperlinked for easy navigation within and between articles. The service also provides search mechanisms, e-mail alerting, immediate access to supplementary data and details of forthcoming articles.

You will notice significant changes to the format of Section C, with each submission now starting on a new page. 1999 also saw the introduction of electronic proofing for all articles in Section C; we are now moving towards the provision of electronic reprints of articles for authors and there will be further research in Chester into the use of electronic reviewing procedures to reduce journal publication times even more.

All Section C Co-editors had input into the revisions of the 2000 Notes for Authors, which were made with the intention of clarifying what is required for successful CIF submission to Section C. The first part of the 2000 Notes for Authors is included in this issue and the full listing is available via the CIF help page at //journals.iucr.org/c/services/authorservices.html .

As of this issue, what were formerly called CIF-access papers are now called electronic papers, and details of these (scheme, authors and synopsis) are listed in the Table of Contents following the full paper listing. Publication times for electronic papers are usually less than 2 months from submission to publication.

Modern data-collection systems, coupled with fast computer systems and powerful structure solution and refinement programs, have increased the rate of structure determination considerably; it is anticipated that more authors will make use of the Section C electronic-paper submission route for rapid publication of their structural results without the need for detailed discussion. Authors are now being asked to focus more on the scientific commentary in Section C full-paper submissions. If in the opinion of the referees and Co-editor the Comment section in a full-paper submission does not have a significant discussion of the structure(s) being reported, the submission may be better suited to publication as an electronic paper and authors will be advised of this during the review process. A short synopsis of the scientific purpose of the electronic paper will of course be needed. It is important to recognize that electronic papers are not seen or considered to be crystallographically inferior to full papers.

Further new publishing initiatives by the IUCr are on the horizon and crystallographers are being surveyed at this time to determine if it would be worth establishing an electronic only section of Acta Crystallographica. If preliminary studies show that this is indeed a feasible option, details will be announced to the crystallographic community later this year.

Section C presently publishes some 1200 papers per year, and I must thank the authors, the Co-editors (listed on the inside front cover), the anonymous referees and the Chester staff for their contributions and support in realizing the fine standard that these scientific papers and results represent. On the inside front cover Dr C. Glidewell is now recognized as Deputy Editor, Dr A. Linden as Data Validation Editor and Dr A. J. Blake as Deputy Data Validation Editor. Finally, it is indeed a pleasure to thank Professor S. R. Hall, the Editor of Section C for the past six years, for the magnificent work that he has done in shepherding Section C from its former printed-paper submission route to the present fully electronic one.

Lang may yer lum reek in the year 2000!