In early 2003, the Powder Diffraction journal and the Denver X-ray Conference (DXC) agreed to collaborate to publish selected DXC articles in the special issue of the Powder Diffraction journal. For the past 8 years, the annual publication of the special June issue has significantly increased the service and the number of technical articles available to the readers of this journal, as well as the circulation of the selected DXC articles for their authors.

I would like to thank the editors of the Proceedings of the 2011 DXC (or Advances in X-ray Analysis), Tom Blanton and George Havrilla, for recommending the articles for publication in this special issue. I also want to thank Nicole Ernst Boris, Denise Flaherty and Carly Bray of ICDD for making sure that everything was in order for this issue.

I hope that our readers will find the articles interesting and useful.