This month it will be exactly 60 years since the first issue of the original journal physica status solidi was published by Akademie-Verlag Berlin. While in its first three decades it served as a growing East-West scientific forum for solid state physics (see here for a detailed historical overview), since 1990 it has successfully evolved into a family of journals with truly international author- and readership in an increasingly globalized scientific world. Despite of an ever-increasing number of, mostly interdisciplinary, competitor journals, pss has maintained its position with stable or even increasing submission numbers. The journals cover a wide range of topics in materials, condensed matter, applied and device physics, also touching adjacent areas like broader materials science, engineering, physical chemistry, optics, and fundamental or theoretical physics. All three journals enjoy increased citation counts and (just published) higher Impact Factors (IF): pss (RRL): 2.821, pss (a): 1.981, pss (b): 1.710. Web of Science's new faster indexing policy and IF calculation process, which now includes Early View articles, also contributed to this great result. In addition, our flagship journal pss (RRL) is now already in its 15th year, giving us even more reason to celebrate.

An outstanding feature of pss is that it always made a point of servicing the solid-state physics research community, in particular, and at the same time, comprehensively. True to their scope, the journals cover all relevant research results in condensed-matter physics, while refraining from arbitrary interdisciplinary dilution, or from exclusive focus on hypes that maybe short-lived. Instead, the editors strive for a distinct level of novelty, significance, depth, and high technical quality, in order to maintain an enduring source of reliable information for experts in the field. We acknowledge that, after the exciting first discovery of a new physical concept or a new material, it may take years of research endeavor to understand the physics, optimize the materials, and truly master the technology. Only then, new industrial and commercial applications emerge. A prime example is certainly one of our core topics since the late 1990s, III-nitride semiconductors and devices. The founders of this field, Nobel laureates Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura, showed boundless perseverance, trying to master a difficult yet promising material system and improving the materials in smaller and smaller steps until they finally brought blue LEDs to the market.

Sadly, Prof. Isamu Akasaki passed earlier this year. Therefore, this Editorial is followed by an Obituary written by Prof. Hiroshi Amano to honor his late teacher and colleague and credit his fundamental achievements for nitride semiconductors. We are very proud that Hiroshi Amano also highlights the humble role that pss has played in disseminating research and supporting this community for more than two decades. And obviously, this collaboration will continue, for example with new article publications based on presentations at the rescheduled upcoming conferences IWN 2022 in Berlin, Germany, and ICNS 14 in 2023 in Fukuoka, Japan, which we hope can again be held as live meetings after the current Covid-19 pandemic has subsided.

On this occasion, we also have the tremendous pleasure to announce that Prof. Hiroshi Amano has accepted the role of honorary Editorial Advisory Board member of physica status solidi. We personally thank him for his continuous support as a guest editor and frequent author (about 150 articles so far, cited over 1600 times) and look forward to a continued close collaboration!

Many other topics, too numerous to list them here, contribute to making pss a vibrant family of journals with a large and loyal international author base. The geographic distribution of our authors is well balanced, with strong content from Europe, the Americas, and all regions of the world. In particular, quality contributions from Asia have certainly become more numerous over the past decade. In 2020, for example, pss authors came from 77 different countries, reflecting a truly global author community, and we expect the same for our large audience of readers worldwide.

It is this great community of supporters around the globe that we are drawing on to celebrate the incredible milestone pss has reached this year. To present a showcase of our topical spectrum, we invited many of our authors, reviewers, former guest editors, and partners to write Reviews and Research Articles featuring their current activities. We were overwhelmed by the amount of positive feedback we received, and as a result we present an ongoing virtual collection of (roughly) “3 x 60” anniversary articles from 3 journals in the 60th year of the family. We could not be more grateful! Please continue to check bit.ly/60_years_pss for weekly updates throughout the year.

While face-to-face meetings have been difficult, if not impossible, over the last 18 months due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we hope to be in touch with you during the remainder of this year and in 2022 to celebrate 60 + 1 years of pss. The start of these activities will be an online event, a Focus Session during the German Physical Society (DPG) Meeting of the Condensed Matter Section (SKM) with invited presentations by some of our lead authors. Next year, we very much hope to be back at upcoming scientific events such as the APS, CPS, DPG, E-MRS and MRS meetings. Should your professional path take you to Wiley office locations such as Berlin, Beijing, or New York, please do not hesitate to contact us at pssa@wiley-vch.de to arrange a personal meeting with our Editors or to visit you at your host institution.

Stay safe and healthy, with best regards and wishes from the entire pss editorial team

Stefan Hildebrandt, Sabine Bahrs, James Cook, Dimitra Gkogkou, Fangyuan Jiang, Anja Habermann, Heike Höpcke, Julia Hübner, Anke Osterland, Nadezda Panarina, Gaia Tomasello, Huan Wang, Marc Zastrow