Since 2003, the journal of Laser and Particle Beams no longer publishes conference proceedings. Even of those conferences where the topics are very closely related to the research fields discussed in this journal. Authors are instead encouraged to submit a regular paper dealing with the topic presented during a conference. The advantage for authors is that there is no page limit as long as the paper passes the peer review process. The discussion of the presented research during the conference helps reviewers to evaluate the quality of the paper and this usually leads to a speedy publication process. Every year in June, the ISI Web of Knowledge releases the Journal Citation Reports. The publication policy adopted by the Laser and Particle Beams editorial board was obviously quite successful since we experienced a substantial increase in the impact factor and in the immediacy index. Thus the Journal Citation Report lists Laser and Particle Beams now as a leading journal in the field of applied physics. This is an opportunity to thank authors for their high quality contributions to this journal. The publisher and the editorial board will try to continue to improve the service to readers and authors during the upcoming years.
From June 11th–16th, 2006 the “XXIX European Conference on Laser Interaction with Matter” was held in Madrid, and was organized by the Institute of Nuclear Fusion—Polytechnic University of Madrid under the chairmanship of Professor Dr. G. Velarde.
ECLIM is a highly regarded international conference with a tradition that dates back to 1966 when the first conference in this series was held at Frascati. The journal of Laser and Particle Beams has strong ties to this conference, since many research papers are submitted to the journal after the ECLIM conference. The topics of ECLIM represent in a comprehensive way the interaction of lasers with matter at high power densities (Barriga-Carrasco, 2006; Barriga-Carrasco & Maynard, 2006; Bret et al., 2006) including the subject of inertial fusion (Bret & Deutsch, 2006; Khalenkov et al., 2006), with ion and laser beams and laser particle acceleration (Glowacz et al., 2006; Lifschitz et al., 2006; Laska et al., 2006), the process of fast ignition (Badziak et al., 2006), associated technologies (Hora, 2006), and numerical simulations (Piriz et al., 2006; Klimo & Limpouch, 2006; Honrubia et al., 2006; Patin et al., 2006). These are of course topics that are currently discussed in this journal and many authors were present to discuss their recent results. The next issue of this journal as well as some of the 2007 issues will carry articles that were submitted as regular papers after the ECLIM conference