Acta Crystallographica Section F: Structural Biology Communications

When Acta Cryst. F was under discussion in 2003 with a launch date of January 2005, much thought was given to its descriptive subtitle. In the fall of 2004, consensus was achieved with Acta Crystallographica Section F, Structural Biology and Crystallization Communications. The title was intended to suggest that its contents would be short articles reporting structure determinations of and crystallization protocols for biological macromolecules, and to highlight that crystallization articles were now to be published in it. Over the ensuing years, the scope of the journal has broadened gradually. In 2006, we published our first NMR structure communication (Einspahr & Guss, 2006) and our structural genomics special issues in following years added many more such articles as well as articles on protein preparation. More recently, we introduced laboratory communications (Weiss & Einspahr, 2009) and scientific comment (Einspahr & Weiss, 2013) as additional categories.

After the 23rd IUCr Congress in Madrid in 2011, a general review of the scope of the journals was initiated including a review of journal names. We took this opportunity to change our name to the somewhat shortened version you see in the title above. The new name no longer artificially segregates crystallization from structural biology. Perhaps more significantly, it also reflects the fact that we now intend to offer a much broader range of structural biology contributions: Acta Cryst. F will be a full-fledged structural biology communications journal. It will have a primary focus on crystallography and will be open to all relevant structural biology methods, particularly those served by the IUCr commissions. The name change will come into effect from January 2014.