The start of 2014 has seen two relevant changes with the IUPAC journal Pure and Applied Chemistry (PAC). Firstly, De Gruyter was appointed as publisher, and, secondly, I have succeeded James Bull as Scientific Editor for the journal. Although there has been quite a steep learning curve, we believe the transition has gone fairly smoothly, which can be attributed to the excellent collaboration between all the parties involved.

The history of PAC goes back to a meeting in Paris in 1957, where it was decided that it was necessary to develop a more efficient way of disseminating the IUPAC work. The first issue was published in 1960, with Harold W. Thompson from Oxford as Chairman of the Editorial Board, and was devoted to the proceedings of a symposium on radioactivation analysis. This first volume also included a publication from the Section of Analytical Chemistry on “Dissociation Constants of Organic Acids in Aqueous Solution”, and Tables from the Commission on Molecular Structure and Spectroscopy for the calibration of infrared spectrometers. In the early years of the journal, papers could be published in English, French, or German. PAC has evolved since then into an international journal in which all publications are in English. Publications are in three distinct areas – IUPAC Recommendations, Technical Reports, and conferences – and there is a joint editorial structure, consisting of Ron Weir, Jürgen Stohner, and myself, to cover these.

Another change since the early days is that developments in electronic submission and review have speeded up the process from submission to publication dramatically, particularly as when articles have been accepted and processed they are available online as ahead-of-print versions. However, the character of PAC is somewhat different from other scientific journals as, ideally, conference proceedings should all appear in the same issue. Occasionally, this has not been possible, and we have had to be publish certain of these before all the papers have been processed. This has happened with the three excellent papers in this issue. The paper by Nicolas P. E. Barry and Peter J. Sadler was presented at the 44^th IUPAC World Chemistry Congress: Clean Energy Through Chemistry in Istanbul in August 2014. Other papers from this meeting are published in number 6 of this volume of PAC. The papers by Feifei Li, Lie Ma, Bo Li, and Changyou Gao, and Hyo Seung Park, Su Yeon Lee, Hyunsik Yoon, and Insup Noh are from the 12^th International Conference on Frontiers of Polymers and Advanced Materials (ICFPAM 2013), which is featured in number 8 of this volume. Full details on those meetings are contained in the prefaces of the respective issues.

Two developments are already underway for the journal in 2015. Firstly, in line with other major journals, authors of all conference papers will be encouraged to submit table of contents, abstracts and graphics. This will help improve the visibility of these articles. In addition, special topic issues will be commissioned. These will involve review articles on developing areas of major interest, and will be edited and reviewed in the same way as conference papers to ensure the high scientific standards of the journal are maintained.