The Best of Small Science

Last year we were honored to publish a special series of Invited Reviews and Concept articles, contributed by our distinguished advisory board members, to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Small. Among them, Prof. Markus Antonietti from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces wrote an interesting Essay to illustrate “small science”, research at the nano/meso/micro-scale, and the challenges in, and perspectives on, the development of this discipline (M. Antonietti, Small is Beautiful: Challenges and Perspectives of Nano/Meso/Microscience, Small, 2016, 12, 2107–2114). As illustrated in the Essay, small science continues to receive enormous interest and will change the face of our science-dependent global society. Exciting advances in small science have encouraged editors to invite scientists from diverse areas to reflect on progress in this field. To this end, Small provides the very best forum for studies of fundamental and applied interdisciplinary research in all areas of small science, where miniaturization leads to novel and important properties. Small science is very interdisciplinary. As an editor of Small, I am often asked the question: “What is the favorite topic for your journal?” Actually, we are completely nonprescriptive, and the only requirement is innovative and impactful research. The lack of prescription with regard to subject matter is because the field continues to advance at incredible speeds in many different directions. Covering such a wide range of research interests means that not all papers will be of interest to all readers, but as editors we hope that we can include all aspects of this important area of research. This is reflected in the diverse topics of the most downloaded articles over the last year (Table 1). The topics of our organized special issues have also been quite diverse, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of our journal. In addition to the issues for the 10th anniversary of Small, last year we also published several special issues, including Advances in Nanobiotechnology, Aggregation-induced Emission, and Nanotechnology in Biomedicine. These special issues were proposed in collaboration with well-recognized professors in the corresponding fields. I would like to thank not only the guest editors, but also the individual contributors for their hard work. We certainly expect small science to continue to flourish and become a tool to solve many critical challenges, both fundamental and applied. In this respect, a new sister journal, Small Methods, will be launched this year. It will focus on significant advances in methods applicable to nano- and microscale research, including but not limited to materials science, biomedical science, chemistry and physics, helping scientists keep abreast of cutting-edge developments in experimental techniques. In addition to Small Methods our Advanced and Small journal family are proud to welcome our new sister journals Advanced Biosystems, Advanced Sustainable Systems, and Solar RRL in 2017. Setting up a new journal is a particularly exciting and stimulating experience for an editor, but our journals would not succeed without the tremendous support of our editorial advisory board members, our authors and readers, and our referees. With the expansion of the scope and impact of our journal family, we as the editorial team promise to ensure that Small will continue to be among the top multidisciplinary journals, and that our authors and readers will continue to enjoy the publishing with us. I look forward to an exciting 2017 for Small science!