It is my pleasure to announce the launch of a new series of
crystallography monographs under the title “SpringerBriefs in
Crystallography”. They cover a new discipline within the
“SpringerBriefs” collection, which publishes concise monographs with
an intermediate scope
(
https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/book-authors-editors/springerbriefs).
SpringerBriefs already covers 84 fields spanning a wide range from
natural sciences to law, social sciences and more; crystallography is
now the 85th field.
The new series is published under the auspices of the International
Union of Crystallography and all the manuscripts will be peer-reviewed
by the series editors, as well as external reviewers when necessary.
It takes an intermediate and so far uncovered place between articles
published by the IUCr journals and full monographs.
The IUCr publishes several types of articles in its journals
(
https://journals.iucr.org):
• Research Papers, which are full-length manuscripts that normally do
not exceed 15 journal pages (about 15 000 words);
• Short Communications, for the presentation of topics of limited
scope or for preliminary announcements of novel research findings;
• Lead Articles, authoritative, comprehensive and forward-looking
reviews of major areas of research interest (by invitation);
• Feature Articles, focused surveys covering recent advances in an
area of current research, which do not aim to be comprehensive, and
are generally about ten journal pages (10 000 words);
• Topical Reviews, which aim to capture the current trends of a field
and are expected to be relatively short (about 6000 words and a
maximum of 50 references, with half of those having been published in
the last three years);
• Letters to the Editor, which may deal with non-technical aspects of
crystallography, its role, its propagation, the proper function of its
Societies etc.
• Scientific Commentaries, which discuss articles of particular
importance for the readership of the journal.
Full monographs spanning hundreds of pages are published in the
IUCr/OUP monographs, and textbooks in the IUCr/OUP texts
(
https://www.iucr.org/publications/iucr-oup).
SpringerBriefs in Crystallography aims at publishing shorter
monographs, typically between 50 and 125 pages, where specific topics
are dealt with more in detail with respect to what one could do in a
Lead Article or Topical Review, in particular with a more pronounced
accent on the background. Also, more space is given to some
fundamentals which would not find place in a Lead Article or Topical
Review, with the aim of providing the reader a more pedagogical
introduction (whenever suitable) without the need to look for it in a
separate text. Publications in this series help support the Outreach
and Education Fund for the International Union of Crystallography
(
https://www.iucr.org/iucr/sponsorship/iucr-outreach-fund).
The website of the new series is available at the address
https://www.springer.com/series/16236, where you find more details as
well as the responsible editor contact information, who upon request
can provide you with a proposal form. On submission the responsible
editor will then forward it to the series editors for discussion and
approval.
Please, feel free to forward this information to your colleagues who
may be interested in publishing a monograph in this series.