By action of the Executive Committee of IAU, the report for 1970 is restricted to half the length of the 1967 draft report; the bibliography and the abstracting of work already published are essentially eliminated. The report is no longer to serve primarily as a review of accomplishments between General Assemblies but rather as a report of work in progress. These changes were adopted by the Executive Committee in order to reduce the cost of publishing the reports.

Several commission members have voiced the opinion that the extensive bibliographies in past reports have been the most valuable contributions of the reports and they have objected to the elimination of the bibliography. Also, material from some observatories and from some national groups that have been submitted for inclusion in this draft report have contained only abstracts of work already published. The rules adopted by the Executive Committee do not permit the report to abstract published works except in evaluating general progress in solar astronomy. We express our regret to these commission members and to these institutions that we have not been able to include the abstracts and bibliography in the present report.