The first 17 articles published in this issue of Nuclear Fusion form a special section with the aim of monitoring the progress made in experiments on fusion physics that have been conducted worldwide up to the end of 2002. These articles are based on overview reports from the various experimental teams presented at the Fusion Energy Conference (FEC-2002). This conference was organized by the IAEA together with the French host organization CEA and was held in Lyon, France, in October 2002. During 2003 the conference overviews have been rewritten and extended for the purpose of this special section and submitted to our standard double-referee peer review. While not all teams have made use of this opportunity, a sufficiently large number have, so that this issue presents a reasonably complete picture of the progress made since the FEC-2000 was held in Sorrento.The articles are arranged in the following sequence:Tokamaks:Performance: JT-60U, JET, DIII-D, ASDEX-U;Steady state/long pulse operation: Tore Supra, TRIAM;Heating methods: C-Mod (ICRH), TCV and T-10 (ECRH) and FTU (LHH + ECRH).Alternative magnetic confinement concepts:Stellarators: LHD;Reversed field pinches: MST.Inertial confinement:Direct drive.Two of the five summaries presented at the Lyon conference, which aim to report on the progress made in fusion physics, complete this special section. These summaries are structured along the lines of specific physics issues instead of specific devices: `Theory of magnetic confinement' and `Experiments in confinement and wave--plasma interaction'.I hope that this special section will give the interested reader an up-to-date picture of the progress made in nuclear fusion research.
Special issue on steady state operation