Introduction to the special issue for the 15th International Conference on Small‐Angle Scattering (SAS2012)

The scientific publishing landscape is changing. Over the past few meetings of thesmall-angle scattering community, it has become challenging for conference organizers topublish traditional volumes of proceedings in scientific journals without impacting onmetrics of concern to many publishing houses, namely impact factor, despite an expressed need to have proceedings. Equally, many scientists would choose not to submit theirfindings to proceedings and wish to communicate their work in high-impact-factorjournals only. From broadly canvassing the community, it has become evident that bothproceedings and selected articles have their own rightful place and are valuable sourcesof reference for both the newcomer to the field and established researchers alike. Assuch, for the first time, the organizers of the small-angle scattering conference havepublished both proceedings (McGillivray et al., 2012) – reflecting the full content of themeeting and reviewed to the extent that the work has been selected for conferencepresentation – and, here, a special issue in what many would consider to be the traditionaland natural home for small-angle scattering, namely Journal of Applied Crystallography.The production of this special issue has been a painstaking process. Attendees wereinvited to submit articles on the basis that, not only would their work be exposed torigorous review but, even then, only selected articles would be published. The refereeingprocess was strict and thorough, many papers were rejected, and all were improved. Weare grateful to all the authors that submitted material, whether selected or not, as well asthe Guest Co-editors – Andrew Jackson, Yoshiyuki Amemiya, Charles Dewhurst, DmitriSvergun and Aldo Craievich – the many referees for their invaluable effort which madethe publication of this special issue possible and, indeed, the entire scientific programmecommittee that developed such a compelling programme. We would also like to thankLisa Stephenson and Peter Strickland at the IUCr Editorial Office in Chester, UK, fortheir support and guidance. The resulting compilation provides an excellent overview ofthe state of the art across the spectrum of small-angle neutron and X-ray scattering(SANS and SAXS), covering the fields of application, theory, methods of analysis andinstrumentatio