This year marks the 130th anniversary of ZAAC. It is incredible how chemistry has advanced as a discipline during this period and how differently scientists work compared to 130 years ago. From the perspective of ZAAC, many developments have taken place in the more recent history of the publishing industry: scientific publications have moved from the traditional printed format to predominantly online and scientists can share their results at a speed that was unimaginable some decades ago. Moving to open access (OA) has been a strongly growing trend in recent years. In ZAAC, more than half (∼54 %) of the content published during 2021 is freely available to the public through OA. The ZAAC community in Germany is especially strong and the transformative agreement between Projekt DEAL and Wiley has paved the way to open access for many scientists based in Germany. Currently, Wiley has signed transformative agreements with 12 countries and agreements are also in place with some additional individual institutes.

During the past year, Prof. Dr. Thomas Klapötke has retired from the ZAAC editorial team. Tom's high level of commitment and contributions to the team will be remembered with sincere gratitude and we want to thank him for the many years of successful collaboration.

We are very pleased to welcome Prof. Dr. David Scheschkewitz to the editorial team of ZAAC starting in January 2022. He holds the Chair in General and Inorganic Chemistry at Saarland-University in Saarbrücken (Germany) since 2011. After obtaining his PhD in chemistry from the Philipps-University in Marburg (Germany) in 1999 with research on aromatic boron heterocycles, and subsequent postdoctoral stints in Toulouse (France), Riverside (California) and Zürich (Switzerland), he was habilitated at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg (Germany) for investigations on anionic silicon-silicon double bond systems. Initially appointed as Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London (United Kingdom) in 2008, he then moved to assume his current role at Saarland University three years later. His research interests include unsaturated Group 14 clusters and double bonds between heavier main group elements as well as their application in polymers, surface coating and as ligands towards transition metals.

In addition to several birthday issues honoring loyal members of the ZAAC community, last year a topical special issue was published on pincer ligands. This special issue was guest-edited by Prof. Dr. Sven Schneider, University of Göttingen, and Prof. Nilay Hazari, University of Yale. Many thanks for the excellent work of the guest editors in assembling this special issue of 17 invited contributions! During 2022 several special issues are planned again, including a special issue on MOFs. A very particular special issue will be published in honor of the 130th anniversary of ZAAC with invited contributions from the International Advisory Board.

The global pandemic has touched our lives in many ways – both professionally and personally – over the past two years. We remain optimistic that during the new year 2022, we will be able to witness a further reopening of society and that dearly missed on-site conferences will take place again soon, allowing us to see familiar faces again and meet old and new friends and collaborators in the ZAAC community.

All the best, Thomas Fässler Christian Limberg David Scheschkewitz Guodong Qian Eva-Stina Müller