Colloid and Polymer Science - a leading international journal of longstanding tradition - is devoted to colloid and polymer science and its interdisciplinary interactions. As such, it responds to a demand which has lost none of its actuality as revealed in the trends of contemporary materials science. To enable an effective and fast dissemination of scientific manuscripts, four categories of contributions are presented: - Invited review articles - Perspectives - Original contributions - Short communications The latter will be published with high priority, at least within two weeks after acceptance of the manuscript. (The usual time between acceptance and publishing OnlineFirst is typically three weeks.) With this immediacy, Colloid and Polymer Science serves as a reliable partner for an effective distribution of scientific results. Purely application-oriented manuscripts as well as routine work are not accepted.