The editorial team at Applied Spectroscopy is making every effort to make the journal as electronically accessible to its readers as possible. Beginning with the December 2011 issue, every article going forward will be available to view in both PDF and HTML formats. The HTML format enables faster navigation through an article, includes thumbnail images of figures and tables that you can expand for greater detail, and speeds up the download process without requiring space on your hard‐drive. In a future phase, this feature will be particularly useful for viewing on tablets and mobile devices, as the HTML text will automatically configure to the width of your screen.

To take full advantage of this new feature, you must be a member of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy or your institution must subscribe to the Journal through the IngentaConnect platform. To see how this works, you should log in to the Society for Applied Spectroscopy home page or point your browser towards any issue after November 2011. For over a year, each issue has contained a Focal Point review article. These articles are available to all readers on an open access basis. Thus, members and non‐members alike may access the full text of these review articles online without restriction.

Another important change is also on its way. Starting with the May 2012 issue, the required format for references cited in Applied Spectroscopy will be changing. The new reference format can be found in full in the “Information for Contributors to Applied Spectroscopy”, which was published at the back of the January 2011 issue. These guidelines can also be found online on the IngentaConnect platform and on the Journal page of the SAS website.

These changes to the reference style incorporate a number of elements that should be of benefit to readers. First, reference citations for all articles will be required to include the article title. This allows readers to more easily determine at a glance whether they would like to follow up on those references. Further, references should now include the full page range, rather than just the first page number. Also, authors who cite articles that are in press but are not yet published will be asked to provide the digital object identifier (DOI) of these articles. This will make it easier to find and access these references both before and after publication. We also encourage authors to include DOIs of cited material wherever it is expedient to do so (i.e., if you already have it, please include it). DOIs can be used on the CrossRef.org website to quickly and easily locate specific material without ambiguity.

The overall format of the references, including order of information, has also changed quite significantly. The new order is:
Authors. ‘‘Title of the Article’’. Journal name (abbreviated). Year. Volume number(issue number): page range.

The following is an example of the new reference style for articles:

1. E.C. Navarre, J.M. Goldberg. ‘‘Design and Characterization of a Theta-Pinch Imploding Thin Film Plasma Source for Atomic Emission Spectrochemical Analysis’’. Appl. Spectrosc. 2010. 65(1): 26-35.

For more examples of article citations, as well as citation examples for other types of published material, please take a look at the full guide online.

We have instituted these changes in an effort to bring Applied Spectroscopy’s references into closer alignment with the standards that are broadly used across the scientific publishing industry. We are working on making reference templates available for popular reference management software, and we will bring you links to those templates when they are available.

We hope that these changes continue to make Applied Spectroscopy as useful and convenient as possible.

PETER GRIFFITHS
Editor-in-Chief

REBECCA AIRMET
Managing Editor