Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography

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. In addition to the research papers, crystallization papers and short communications, the journal has now seen the introduction of new sections of new commercial products, recruitment and meetings. The year also marked a redesign and the launch of the electronic edition of the journal as Biological Crystallography Online. Apart from providing the full text of the articles in the journal, this edition contains many additional features including linking to online databases such as the Protein Data Bank and Medline, and is continuing to develop to provide a complete service for biological crystallographers.

The IUCr has reviewed its policy on deposition and release of macromolecular coordinate and experimental data, and a set of guidelines has been published [Acta Cryst. D56 (2000), 2]. 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, for example diagrams and mathematical appendices, can be deposited in the IUCr electronic archive for retrieval online.

Since 1998, the journal has been the home of the popular proceedings of the CCP4 (Collaborative Computational Project No. 4 in protein crystallography) annual study weekends. The theme of this year's issue, which will appear in the summer, is lowresolution phasing.

We are pleased to welcome the Past President of the IUCr as Co-editor; Ted Baker (U. of Auckland), who has wide experience in protein structure analysis, notably of metalloproteins, also has interests in structural genomics, mutagenesis and protein engineering. It is the wideranging expertise of the Editorial Board that maintains the balance between high-precision information and analysis of results in terms of biomolecular structure and function.