25 years ago,

• the European Physical Society (EPS),

• the Société Française de Physique (SFP) and its subsidiary EDP Sciences,

• the Società Italiana di Fisica (SIF) and

• the Institute of Physics (IOP)

started a new journal, which they called Europhysics Letters. This new journal incorporated Lettere al Nuovo Cimento and Journal de Physique Lettres and was published by EPS, EDP Sciences and SIF until 2006. IOP Publishing then joined the publishers to host the online version of the journal which was rebranded in 2007 as "EPL". Peer review is undertaken by the EPS, production and copy-editing are performed by SIF and printing and distribution are completed by EDP Sciences. Submissions can be made at the Editorial Office Website.

To mark the 25th Anniversary of EPL, an International Symposium will be held at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (BadW) in Munich from 2 to 4 May 2011 .

Prominent researchers of international renown will present a selection of the most exciting topics of current physics research at this Symposium. The lectures will be aimed at an audience consisting of interested high-school students, advanced under-graduate students, graduate students and post-docs. Representatives of funding organisations, Universities and other research institutions will be present as well.

You are cordially invited to attend — there will be no registration fee.

The range of topics discussed at the Symposium reflects EPL’s broadband nature, i.e. its coverage of all fields of physics. As a forward-looking journal, EPL is particularly strong in covering emerging fields. Correspondingly the categories 'General Physics' and 'Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology' of the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) are covered with a comparatively larger number of letters than in similar letter journals. The Editorial Board of EPL, comprise the Editor-in-Chief and a team of 48 Co-editors — all of them active researchers, whose workplaces span the world. The Editorial Board is responsible for overseeing the review process; its members select the referees for every manuscript and decide on whether a paper will be published in EPL. Truly, EPL is a journal run by scientists for the international scientific community. Currently EPL publishes about the same number of letters by authors working in Europe as from authors working in other parts of the World. The median time between submission and acceptance is 33 days for letters that do not require a revision, and 80 days for letters where authors have been asked to revise their paper. After hovering around 2.2 for several years, the Impact Factor of EPL has risen by 31 % to 2.893 for the year 2009; a further increase may be expected for the year 2010.
We hope that the widely acknowledged, excellent service to authors makes EPL your prime choice, if you have to present a result that means a decisive step forward in our knowledge of physical phenomena. And we hope as well that many of you will be able to attend the 25^th Anniversary Symposium.