The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic caused by SARS‐CoV‐2, a novel betacoronavirus, has dramatically changed everyone´s daily life. With increasing number of infections worldwide many countries have implemented various forms of lockdown. As a consequence of the lockdown scenarios many national and international meetings and congresses had to be cancelled this year. The 25^th Congress of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) in Prague, Czech Republic, has for example been postponed to August 2021. We were really very fortunate that the annual meetings of the German Crystallographic Association (DGK) and the German Association for Crystal Growth (DGKK) took place as originally planned in this year.

The joint Polish‐German crystallographic meeting (JPCGM‐2020) was held in Wroclaw/Breslau, Poland from February, 23–27 this year. The first plenary lecture: “From SARS to MERS and COVID‐19: How X‐ray crystallography can help fight emerging viruses” held by Rolf Hilgenfeld (Institute of Biochemistry, University of Lübeck) was an excellent demonstration of how one of the key structural units of this virus, the main protease M^pro, was solved and refined. The structure analysis was carried out at the Berlin Synchrotron source BESSY II. Crystal structure determination plays an important role for understanding the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus and enables the search for active substances against this virus. An overview about all articles on coronaviruses, which was published by Wiley on behalf of the IUCr, is provided on a webpage of the IUCr.

The German Association for Crystal Growth (DGKK—Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kristallwachstum und Kristallzüchtung) celebrated a specific jubilee this year, its 50^th anniversary of foundation. This jubilee was honored with a special issue of Crystal Research & Technology. We are very thankful to all authors who contributed to this special issue. The annual meeting of DGKK took place in Munich‐Garching, March 11−13, where the 50^th anniversary was celebrated at a specific ceremonial act. Klaus‐Werner Benz, Georg Müller, and Peter Rudolph were elected in Munich as the first honorary members of DGKK. Two of them, Klaus‐Werner Benz and Peter Rudolph are still serving as a consulting editor and as member of the Editorial Advisory Board for our journal. Georg Müller was many years active for our journal as a member of the Advisory Board.

Volume 55 will be the last one where we (W. Neumann and K.W. Benz) are responsible as editors. In our opinion it is now time for us to say goodbye after 23 years of serving as editors for Crystal Research & Technology. With the beginning of next year an in‐house team of Wiley‐VCH will take over the responsibility for the journal.

The journal was founded as Kristall und Technik (subtitle: Zeitschrift für experimentelle und technische Kristallographie) by Will Kleber (1906–1970) and Hermann Neels (1913–2002) in 1966. After the early death of Will Kleber in 1970, Hermann Neels was working as Editor‐in‐Chief up to the end of 1996. Altogether, he served as Editor‐in‐Chief for 30 years, which was appreciated in a special issue (Vol. 32, (1) 1997). From 1972 until 1979 the cover of the issues showed the name of the journal in both German and English. By 1980 the transformation to Crystal Research & Technology (subtitle: Journal of experimental and industrial crystallography) as an international journal was concluded. The journal was published by the Akademie Verlag Berlin up to 1997. In 1991 the Akademie Verlag became part of the Weinheim VCH Publishing group. John Wiley & Sons took over VCH in 1997 and since 1998 the journal is published by Wiley‐VCH. The official beginning of our work as new team of editors (Wolfgang Neumann as Editor‐in‐Chief, Klaus‐Werner Benz as Consulting Editor, and Holger Kleesen as Editor Assistant and later as Managing Editor) was issue 1 of Vol. 32 (1997). The editorial work for this issue we had begun already in 1996. At this time Wolfgang Neumann was a member of the Advisory Board and Klaus‐Werner Benz was already Consulting Editor of this journal since the beginning of 1996. When we started our work, the majority of papers was submitted as typewritten manuscripts without accompanying computer readable files. First of all, a homepage http://crysta.physik.hu-berlin.de/crt was created where authors could obtain all necessary information about submission as well as the current status of their papers very quickly using the journal's internet address. Typewritten manuscripts were no longer accepted.

Hermann Neels celebrated his 85^th birthday on January 23^rd, 1998. This was a good opportunity for us, Marianne Simon‐Daniel from Wiley‐VCH and W. Neumann as Editor‐in‐Chief, to congratulate him personally and hand him over the issue 1 of Vol. 33 in his home in Machern near Leipzig (Figure 1).

Especially, the landmark agreement between Wiley and Projekt DEAL was signed which provides Open Access publication and access to most of Wiley's content to a vast majority of German Academic Institutions. This will allow corresponding authors based at these German institutions to publish their articles in our journal under an Open Access license, while costs are covered by their institutions under this agreement. Learn more about the agreement with Projekt DEAL here and find out if your institution is a participant in this or other national Open Access programs at Wiley here. Nonetheless, the Crystal Research & Technology is still hybrid, i. e. also publishing subscription content after Copyright Transfer Agreement free of charge to the authors.

Last but not least, a new licensing workflow has been rolled out recently, as part of which all license signing (CTAs and Creative Commons licenses) will now be handled in Author Services. This will make it easier for corresponding authors, especially those who are eligible for OnlineOpen, to choose the most suitable publication conditions for their articles.

Especially thankful we are to our Managing Editors: Holger Kleesen worked in our team from 1996 until August 2012. He developed also a specific computer program for the paper management which was very helpful on the way to an electronic journal. Hakim Meskine, a member of the in‐house editorial staff, occupied this position from October 2012 until June 2019.

We sincerely thank the following staff members of Wiley‐VCH for their support of our work: Marianne Simon‐Daniel, Cornelia Wanka, Vera Palmer, André Danelius, Dietmar Reichelt, Heike Höpcke, Jorinde Van Heers, Alexander Grossmann, Hakim Meskine, Marc Zastrow and Stefan Hildebrandt.

We wish the new Wiley‐VCH in‐house editorial team with Marc Zastrow as the new Editor‐in‐Chief many successes. You can be sure that as long as we are still alive, we will be grateful for having had the opportunity to serve the scientific community.

Wolfgang Neumann, Editor‐in‐Chief

Klaus‐Werner Benz, Consulting Editor

Marc Zastrow, New Editor‐in‐Chief

由SARS-CoV-2（一种新型的β冠状病毒）引起的2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行极大地改变了每个人的日常生活。随着世界范围内感染数量的增加，许多国家已经实施了各种形式的锁定。由于封锁方案，今年必须取消许多国内和国际会议。例如，在捷克共和国布拉格举行的国际晶体学联合会（IUCr）第25^届大会已推迟至2021年8月。我们非常幸运的是，德国晶体学协会（DGK）和德国晶体学协会的年度会议晶体生长（DGKK）按原计划于今年进行。

波兰-德国晶体学联合会议（JPCGM-2020）于今年2月23日至27日在波兰弗罗茨瓦夫/布雷斯劳举行。Rolf Hilgenfeld（吕贝克大学生物化学研究所）举办的第一场全体讲座：“从SARS到MERS和COVID-19：X射线晶体学如何帮助对抗新兴病毒”很好地展示了关键结构之一该病毒的主要蛋白酶M ^pro，得到解决和完善。结构分析是在柏林同步加速器源BESSY II上进行的。晶体结构的确定对于理解SARS-CoV-2病毒起着重要的作用，并且可以搜索针对该病毒的活性物质。IUCr的网页上提供了Wiley代表IUCr发表的有关冠状病毒的所有文章的概述。

德国协会晶体生长（DGKK -德意志GESELLSCHAFT献给Kristallwachstum UNDKristallzüchtung）今年庆祝了一个特定的禧年，其50^日成立纪念日。该周年纪念获得了《晶体研究与技术》杂志的特刊。我们非常感谢为该期特刊做出贡献的所有作者。DGKK的年度会议于3月11日至13日在慕尼黑-格ARCHING举行，第50^届纪念日是通过特定的仪式来庆祝的。克劳斯 - 维尔纳·奔驰，乔治·米勒，彼得·鲁道夫在慕尼黑当选为DGKK的第一位荣誉成员。他们中的两个人，克劳斯·沃纳·本茨（Klaus-Werner Benz）和彼得·鲁道夫（Peter Rudolph）仍是该杂志的咨询编辑和编辑咨询委员会成员。乔治·穆勒（GeorgMüller）作为顾问委员会成员活跃于我们的期刊多年。

第55卷将是我们（W. Neumann和KW Benz）负责编辑的最后一本。我们认为，在担任Crystal Research＆Technology的23年编辑之后，现在是我们该说再见的时候了。从明年年初开始，Wiley-VCH内部团队将接管该杂志的职责。

该杂志由Will Kleber（1906–1970）和Hermann Neels（1913–2002）于1966年创立，名称为Kristall und Technik（副标题：Zeitschriftfür实验性和技术Kristallographie ）。在1970年Will Kleber早逝之后，Hermann Neels成为了直到1996年底担任总编辑。他总共担任了30年的总编辑，这在特刊中颇受赞赏（第32卷，（1）1997年）。从1972年到1979年，这些期刊的封面用德语和英语显示了该期刊的名称。到1980年，转变为“晶体研究与技术”（副标题：实验和工业晶体学杂志））作为国际期刊的总结。该杂志由柏林Akademie Verlag出版，直至1997年。1991年，Akademie Verlag成为Weinheim VCH Publishing集团的一部分。John Wiley＆Sons于1997年接管了VCH，自1998年以来，该杂志由Wiley-VCH出版。我们作为新的编辑团队的工作正式开始（Vol。1），Wolfgang Neumann为总编辑，Klaus-Werner Benz为咨询编辑，Holger Kleesen为助理编辑，后来担任总编辑。32（1997）。我们从1996年就开始对此问题进行编辑工作。自1996年初以来，沃尔夫冈·诺伊曼（Wolfgang Neumann）是顾问委员会的成员，而克劳斯·沃纳·本茨（Klaus-Werner Benz）从1996年初就已经是该杂志的咨询编辑。大多数论文都是以打字稿的形式提交的，没有随附计算机可读文件。首先，创建了一个主页http://crysta.physik.hu-berlin.de/crt，作者可以使用该期刊的互联网地址快速获取有关投稿以及论文当前状态的所有必要信息。打字稿不再被接受。

赫尔曼·尼尔斯庆祝他85^日生日1月23日^第三届，1998年这是一个很好的机会，让我们，玛丽安西蒙-丹尼尔从WILEY-VCH和W.纽曼担任主编，主编，向他表示祝贺，并亲自把他交给了第1卷第1期 33在他位于莱比锡附近的Machern的家中（图1）。

特别是，Wiley与Projekt DEAL之间签署了具有里程碑意义的协议，该协议为绝大多数德国学术机构提供了开放获取出版物，并提供了Wiley大部分内容的访问权。这样一来，这些德国机构的通讯作者就可以根据开放访问许可在我们的期刊上发表文章，而费用则由其机构根据本协议承担。在此处了解有关与Projekt DEAL达成的协议的更多信息，并在此处通过Wiley了解您的机构是否参与了此计划或其他国家开放访问计划。尽管如此，Crystal Research＆Technology仍然是混合型的，即在版权转让协议之后也免费向作者发布订阅内容。

最后但并非最不重要的一点是，最近推出了一个新的许可工作流程，其中的所有许可签名（CTA和知识共享许可）现在都将在Author Services中进行处理。这将使相应的作者，尤其是有资格使用OnlineOpen的作者，更容易为他们的文章选择最合适的出版条件。

特别感谢我们的执行编辑：霍尔格·克利森（Holger Kleesen）从1996年到2012年8月在我们的团队中工作。他还开发了用于纸张管理的特定计算机程序，这对电子期刊的发展非常有帮助。内部编辑人员Hakim Meskine从2012年10月至2019年6月担任该职位。

我们衷心感谢Wiley-VCH的以下工作人员对我们工作的支持：Marianne Simon-Daniel，Cornelia Wanka，Vera Palmer，AndréDanelius，Dietmar Reichelt，HeikeHöpcke，Jorinde Van Heers，Alexander Grossmann，Hakim Meskine，Marc Zastrow和斯蒂芬·希尔德布兰特

我们希望新的Wiley-VCH内部编辑团队与Marc Zastrow一起担任新的总编辑，取得许多成功。您可以确定，只要我们还活着，我们将很高兴有机会为科学界服务。

主编沃尔夫冈·诺伊曼（Wolfgang Neumann）

克劳斯·沃纳·奔驰（Klaus-Werner Benz），咨询编辑

马克·扎斯特罗（Marc Zastrow），新任总编辑