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This issue brings together papers from the 6th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI'97) held in Japan in August 1997. This is one of the major synchrotron radiation conferences, held every three years, and has so far published its proceedings in a variety of journals. Now that the synchrotron radiation community have a journal of their own it is only natural that the proceedings of this largest synchrotron radiation conference are published in JSR. It is particularly satisfying that this has coincided with the 50th anniversary of the first observation of synchrotron radiation light from the General Electric 70 MeV synchrotron.
The SRI conferences have evolved over the years with the more recent conferences covering not only research and development of synchrotron radiation instrumentation but also the exploitation of synchrotron radiation for diffraction, spectroscopic and imaging applications in the physical, chemical, biological and medical sciences. This issue thus brings together articles from the whole spectrum of synchrotron radiation activities and reflects the interdisciplinary nature of this rapidly expanding community. The conference coincided with the opening of one of the world's most powerful synchrotron radiation sources, the 8 GeV SPring-8 storage ring at the Harima Science Garden City, Japan. The energy and size of the SPring-8 source are several orders of magnitude higher than those of the GEC synchrotron 50 years ago. The extent of the synchrotron radiation community has increased beyond the expectations of the pioneers of synchrotron radiation science, several of whom were present at the conference and whose contributions form part of this issue. We are particularly pleased that the conference delegates were able to hear a first-hand account from Dr John Blewett, who had predicted and observed the shrinkage of the electron orbit due to synchrotron radiation in 1945 (see this issue, pages 135–139).
This issue thus represents an important stage in the development and exploitation of synchrotron radiation as well as a significant step for JSR. The papers for this proceedings issue were refereed to the usual standards of JSR and the review process differed in significant ways from previous SRI proceedings. Previously, the majority of the papers had been refereed during the meeting. The papers for this conference were handled by JSR Co-editors and three Guest Editors (Professors Ohno, Miyahara and Ueki), who selected the referees and followed the normal refereeing procedure whereby referees were given up to six weeks to carry out rigorous refereeing. As a result, substantial revision to the original manuscripts took place in a large number of cases. Despite much effort from the Co-editors and Guest Editors, a significant number of papers did not become acceptable. We believe that this effort is reflected in the improved quality of the proceedings and would like to invite comment from the community for future proceedings.
Recently, JSR entered into the citation ranking tables for the first time; on impact factor JSR is third out of 37 journals covering instruments and instrumentation, eighth out of 46 covering optics and 18th out of 60 covering applied physics. We acknowledge here then the excellent papers submitted by authors, and the referees who have served the journal so well. We believe that this issue, which represents the single biggest undertaking by JSR, will go further towards improving the impact of our community's single dedicated journal. We are grateful to the Managing Editor and his team for their tremendous effort in ensuring the high quality of production; their professionalism is evident throughout the issue. We thank Dr H. Ohno, chairman of the publication committee, for acting as a Special Editor for this issue and coordinating the publication activities at the conference.
This issue is a testimony to our stated objective of `providing the focus for the whole of the synchrotron radiation community'. On the 50th anniversary of synchrotron radiation, the range of opportunities available today is extremely broad with the synchrotron providing unique experimental capabilities from infrared (meV) to hard X-rays (>300 keV). Several synchrotron radiation centres have catered for this range of activities by building two synchrotron radiation sources; NSLS is a prime example of the 1980's, where the X-ray source was complemented by a low-energy source, and, more recently, at Harima, SPring-8 is complemented by the 1.5 GeV SUBARU ring.
The issue also contains our first Book Review; this will become a regular feature and we invite you to submit books covering any aspect of synchrotron radiation or its applications to either the Book Review Editor or the Managing Editor. We believe that you will find this and the other remaining 1998 JSR issues essential reading and would urge you to ensure that your library subscribes to the journal.
