Biological Crystallography goes online

1999 saw a number of major developments for Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography. The monthly publication of the journal was a great success; the continued reduction in publication times attracted many excellent structural and theoretical manuscripts. The year also marked the launch of the electronic edition of the journal as Biological Crystallography Online . This is available at //journals.iucr.org . It provides fully navigable text of all articles published in the journal in 1999, links to other IUCr journals, PDB, NDB and MEDLINE. The contents of all previous issues of Acta Crystallographica back to 1948 are available to search . An e-mail alerting service has also been set up so that readers can receive the contents as soon as an issue is published. These services have been possible as a result of the electronic production methods now employed by the Chester office and further developments are under way in 2000 including testing electronic submission and review of papers in Acta Crystallographica Section D.

New revised notes for authors for 2000 are included in this issue. The emphasis has now been placed on electronic submission in order to speed up the review and publication processes. Authors are also encouraged to submit multimedia additions to their papers for publication in Biological Crystallography Online . Once a paper has been submitted authors may check the status of their paper, download their proofs and then, once it is published, receive an electronic reprint of their paper. These services are all available via Biological Crystallography Online .

The IUCr has reviewed its policy on deposition and release of structural data, and a set of guidelines are published in this issue. Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography will follow the recommendations given in these guidelines and urges other publishers to do likewise. Other supplementary material for a paper, e.g. diagrams, mathematical appendices, can be deposited in the IUCr electronic archive for retrieval online.

Again many thanks to the reviewers of submitted papers; they do a superb job of maintaining our required standards. Also thank you to our Co-editors who oversee the reviews, and the staff at Chester, particularly Louise Clark-Jones, who ready the manuscript for publication, and the Editor-in-Chief, John Helliwell who is available for advice and support when needed.