Structure Reports Online: the first year

One year ago the International Union of Crystallography launched its first purely electronic journal, Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online. At that time we looked forward to its development and growth and to a celebration of its first birthday. We have now reached that date, and there is indeed much to celebrate.

This new and rapid means of publication of crystal structures has been welcomed and embraced by a growing number of authors. The first year's issues have included 800 articles and almost 2000 pages in PDF format, and it will probably not be long before we have 100 articles in a single month's issue. Although there is a formal publication date each month, individual articles are made available on the web as soon as proofs have been corrected, and this may be within a few days of receipt of the original CIF through the journal's electronic submission procedure. The average time from receipt to publication on the web is less than one month, and this is one of the major attractions of Structure Reports Online.

Accreditation of the journal by the Institute for Scientific Information, leading to inclusion of articles in the Science Citation Index, was granted earlier this year. This is an important recognition of the journal's importance and relevance and adds to its attraction as a publication medium.

All articles are available in HTML and PDF formats, and free reprints are made available electronically to authors. A range of supplementary material, search and e-mail alerting mechanisms, and other author and reader services are provided, for this and other IUCr journals, at https://journals.iucr.org , the home of Crystallography Journals Online.

Small changes have been made to the Notes for Authors, which are available at https://journals.iucr.org/e/services/authorservices.html . Authors are reminded that all submissions should be checked, and preferably read in preprint form, before they are uploaded through the journal's web site for review and publication; the checkcif and printcif facilities are available through the same web site for this purpose. To help authors produce a suitable CIF submission, a model CIF is also provided on the web site, generously annotated with explan­ations and comments on the important features.

We are proud of the tremendous success of Structure Reports Online in its first year of operation. It is due in no small measure to the dedication and hard work of the editorial staff in Chester and of our excellent team of Co-editors, to whom we are very grateful. During the year we have been glad to have Dr Jean-Claude Daran (CNRS, Toulouse) join the editorial board, and we now also welcome Dr Khalil Abboud (University of Florida), Professor Angiola Chiesi-Villa (University of Parma), Professor Arthur Mar (University of Alberta) and Professor Wing-Tak Wong (University of Hong Kong) as new members. The growth of the journal suggests that we will be seeking further Co-editors during 2002!