The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Luft- und Raumfahrt–Lilienthal–Oberth e.V. (DGLR) with more than 3,000 members is the largest and oldest professional aerospace society in Germany. DGLR is open to anybody related in one way or another to aerospace, and puts particular emphasis on reaching out to young people in order to raise their awareness of aerospace. Each year DGLR organises a national aerospace conference attracting generally between 600 and 700 participants. In 2011, DGLR held its sixtieth national aerospace conference in Bremen from 27 to 29 September.

Two years ago, the programme commission decided to offer the participants in addition to ordinary conference proceedings one which contains reviewed papers. The reviews were carried out by DGLR-named reviewers. In the meantime, CEAS with DGLR as one of the key players has decided to create two new archival Journals, the CEAS Aeronautical Journal and the CEAS Space Journal, supported also by the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) and the European Space Agency (ESA). Papers are available both in electronic and printed form. The first paper issues appeared in September 2011. With this opportunity in mind, for the conference in 2011, DGLR approached Springer to discuss the use of the CEAS Journals to offer an archival publication to those participants who agreed to have their papers rigorously reviewed. Roughly 70 participants chose this opportunity. As could be anticipated, not all review processes could be finished to produce the special paper edition in time for the conference. However, those that were accepted could already be viewed on the corresponding Springer server. We are glad that finally the current paper versions can be put on the market.

Based on the response in the aerospace community, DGLR will consider having special issues again for next year’s conference “DGLR, 100 years” taking place in Berlin.

D. Müller-Wiesner, President of DGLR

R. Henke, Editor-in-Chief, CEAS Aeronautical Journal

C. Stavrinidis, Editor-in-Chief, CEAS Space Journal