Published by the American Geophysical Union as part of the Special Publications Series.

The International Magnetospheric Study, or IMS, was an international program under the auspices of SCOSTEP in which a coordinated effort was made to understand magnetospheric processes. The active phase of the IMS, during which data were gathered, ran from 1976 to 1979 with the different data gathering efforts coming on line at various times during this period. Although there were many national programs devoted to the IMS the coordination between countries was principally at the level of the participating scientists rather than at the level of the bureaucracy. This aspect of the IMS had its advantages and its disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is that there is no coordinated system for reporting of the IMS results, either with regard to the data gathering effort, the workshops devoted to these data or the scientific results of the IMS. It is in an attempt to introduce some order in this chaos we have compiled the papers in this book. We hope that the book serves both the active researcher involved heavily in the IMS from the beginning and those who would like to gain entry into the IMS study effort. For while the active data gathering phase is over, the data analysis phase has just begun and there is much to do with the data.