Faster publication in Acta Crystallographica Section D

Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography will now appear monthly. This, together with an increased number of staff at Chester to process manuscripts, should greatly decrease the time from receipt of a manuscript to its publication.

Section D contains full-length research papers, invited topical reviews, lead articles, fast communications, short communications, crystallization papers and letters to the editor. Such articles include structure reports (mainly of macromolecules), new methods of growing, mounting and measuring diffraction from crystals, new methods of structure determination and refinement, and reports on crystallization conditions together with unit-cell dimensions and space groups. Where necessary for clarity in description, color pictures are published free of cost to the author.

The 1999 notes for authors are included with this issue. There are very few changes from the previous notes. In addition to the copyright form, we request signatures to show that each listed author has seen the manuscript as submitted; this has been carried out so as to avert some of the problems we had early in the history of Acta Crystallographica Section D. Deposition of atomic coordinates and structure factors in the Protein Data Bank is required for those reporting structures obtained by diffraction methods; a reference code is published with the paper, but authors have the option to delay the release of atomic coordinates and structure factors, a policy which is currently under review by the IUCr Executive Committee (see the letter to the Editor in this issue on this subject). We are also proceeding to investigate the use of mmCIF files which include data on all aspects of the diffraction study and remarks, where necessary, from the authors. We look forward to receiving such files for structures in the future.

My sincere thanks to the many members of the crystallographic community who have served as reviewers of submitted papers. They do a wonderful job and their input is essential in the maintenance of standards by the journal. In addition, the staff at Chester, particularly Louise Clark-Jones, have performed an excellent job in shepherding the articles to the publishers. The co-editors are also deserving of our thanks; they oversee the publication fate of a large proportion of the submitted manuscripts. Without their careful work the expansion of the journal to a monthly issue would not have been possible. My thanks to John Helliwell, Editor-in-Chief, for advice and help when requested. Finally, I also would like to thank Eileen Pytko here in Philadelphia for her handling of queries from authors and the processing of manuscripts sent to my office.