For a long time it was a wish of European plasma diagnosticians to have a biennial conference that brings together scientist working on diagnostics for magnetic confinement fusion, beam plasmas and inertial fusion, low-temperature and industrial plasmas, and basic and astrophysical plasmas. Although it is relatively straightforward to set up a new conference in a field, that doesn’t hold for obtaining the endorsement from the European Physical Society (EPS). After a successful 1.5 day pilot, which was organized as satellite to the main EPS Conference on Plasma Physics in Helsinki in 2013, the EPS gave the green light for organizing the First EPS Conference on Plasma Diagnostics, that was held from 14 to 17 April, 2015 in Frascati (Rome), Italy.

The International Scientific Committee of the First EPS Conference on Plasma Diagnostics (ECPD1) was formed by Dimitri Batani, Bob Bingham, Rejean Boivin, Hong Young Chang, Tony Donné (Chair), Anna Frank, Ralf König, Andrea Murari, Hiroaki Nishimura, Svetlana Ratynskaia, Vyacheslav Shakhatov and Michael Tatarakis. The Local Organizing Committee had as members Giulia Bartolomei, Daniela Nardone, Angelo A. Tuccillo (Chair) and Vincenzo Vitale from ENEA-Frascati, which took the whole responsibility of the organisation, Michela Gelfusa and Andrea Malizia from Rome University of Tor Vergata, which collaborate with ENEA-Frascatiin the organisation.

The International Scientific Committee of the conference aimed for a balanced distribution of tutorials and invited talks over the four categories mentioned above, with the aim to make the conference of interest for people from all corners of plasma physics, and also to enhance the possibilities for cross-fertilisation between the various disciplines of plasma diagnostics. A bulk of the papers presented and discussed at the conference is published here, in Proceedings of Science. All of them have been peer-reviewed at least by one expert through a process that has involved most of the conference’s attendance. A number of selected papers are being published in parallel in a Special Issue on Journal of Instrumentation. Proceeding on PoS and Special Issues on JINST http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-0221/focus/extraproc48 are both electronic full open access issues. The papers collected in these proceedings, are a good representation of those effectively presented at the conference; they are a close representation also of the sharing among the 4 topics of the Conference. Indeed the Magnetic Confinement Fusion section took largely the lead with a percentage in excess of 70% of the total number of presented papers. Some 15% belonged to Laser Beam and Inertial Plasma, Low Temperature and Inertial Plasmas section was closed to 10% and only a 5% was presented in the section of Basic and Astrophysics Plasmas. Given the success of this first meeting, and the positive feedback obtained from the about 180 participants from all around the world, it was decided to organize the 2nd EPS Conference on Plasma Diagnostics in April/May 2017 in or near Bordeaux, France. The International Scientific Committee of the 2nd Conference will benefit from the experience gained from this 1st event to promote a more balanced contribution between the topics to aim more and more to a truly interdisciplinary conference with increased cross-fertilisation capability.

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