This special issue of Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering contains ten papers, selected contributions from the 47th US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposium held in San Francisco, California from June 23–26, 2013, and 20 other papers submitted to the journal.

The US Rock Mechanics/Geomechanics Symposia are multidisciplinary international annual meetings of the American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA). Starting with Volume 46, Number 3, May 2013, our journal is publishing each year expanded, re-written, and re-reviewed articles coming from these Symposia. As shown in the Introduction following this Editorial, Alvin C. Chan, Joseph P. Morris and Laura J. Pyrak-Nolte acted as Guest Editors for these articles.

Our readers will have noticed that Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering has been gradually increasing the number of papers published each year, with an encouraging effort and attention to our field from our Publisher. In addition to the publication of the ISRM Suggested Methods, we have been publishing and will continue to publish Special Issues on selected advanced topics from civil, mining and petroleum engineering, with due attention to cross-disciplinary issues and more recent emerging challenges in our field.

We have been able to do this thanks to the involvement and help of many people from our Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering Community, always with due attention to maintaining the quality of our journal.