Member of RAS, Dr. Irina P. Beletskaya 

One year has passed since the first issue of our journal. Seven issues have been made during this period ( one sample copy in 1998 and six issues in 1999) and we can say that the debut has taken place. Certainly we did not manage to realize everything planned for this time, at present a scope of authors is not very wide (St.-Petersburg, Moscow, Perm and Novosibirsk), periodicity is rather low (one issue per two months) but nevertheless we have got over thousand of readers monthly from Russia, Great Britain, the USA, Germany, Israel etc. by now. The journal is present in many Internet search systems, after publications in the journal our authors are invited to participate in conferences and symposiums.

When we established the journal we pursued the following goals:

• to set up a special-purpose journal on fluorine chemistry in Russia
• to provide high efficiency in publications of articles
• to demonstrate the status of fluorine chemistry in our country

Our readers are the first to judge how we have fulfilled all that. We have received a sufficient great number of favorable comments and proposals. We put efforts to take them into consideration in our work. We appreciate very much every feedback from our readers.

Despite the existence of the journal only in the Web edition, it is an officially registered edition at the State Press Committee. According to the law on the press and mass media, we always present an advance copy to the State Press Committee, thus as one may say the publications do not disappear without leaving a trace and the all rights reserved. Our journal is absolutely free of charge that causes some limitations: we may allow only the last issue on the server leaving just abstracts from the previous ones. In 2000 we plan to issue all the numbers containing the full content of articles for 1999 on CD-ROM.

Let me bring you our congratulations for the New 2000 Year, new millennium and wish you happiness.