Acta Crystallographica Section A: Foundations and Advances publishes articles reporting advances in the theory and practice of all areas of crystallography in the broadest sense. As well as traditional crystallography, this includes nanocrystals, metacrystals, amorphous materials, quasicrystals, synchrotron and XFEL studies, coherent scattering, diffraction imaging, time-resolved studies and the structure of strain and defects in materials.

The journal has two parts, a rapid-publication Advances section and the traditional Foundations section. Articles for the Advances section are of particularly high value and impact. They receive expedited treatment and may be highlighted by an accompanying scientific commentary article and a press release. Further details are given in the November 2013 Editorial.

The central themes of the journal are, on the one hand, experimental and theoretical studies of the properties and arrangements of atoms, ions and molecules in condensed matter, periodic, quasiperiodic or amorphous, ideal or real, and, on the other, the theoretical and experimental aspects of the various methods to determine these properties and arrangements.