Double Digit Impact

I think it was obvious from the start that Advanced Energy Materials would take off and fly: we were there at the right time and place, and we received immediate and enthusiastic support from many of our mother journal's leading authors, board members, and readers. Outstanding experts joined the AEnM editorial advisory board and soon lots of high-class manuscripts were coming in. And still, success is never automatic and never guaranteed. Not only do people have to collectively agree that something is worth having or worth supporting, they have to follow up individually with real action, often involving taking a chance or even a risk. Many have done so, submitting some of their best results to us and entrusting AEnM with their publication. In times of often intense pressure by funding instances and career relevance to publish prolifically in journals that already have a high impact factor, such avid support for a new journal cannot be taken for granted. Recently, Advanced Energy Materials received its first ISI Impact Factor in the 2012 edition of ISI's Journal Citation Report, making immediate double digits at 10.043. With this spectacular result in hand, it's rewarding to see that all authors now indeed reap the full benefit of having committed precious results to the journal. While I need to thank them for their individual action, what matters also is that the impact factor is always earned by a collective and made by a collective. As in every team effort, there are stronger and weaker individual contributions; there can never be perpetual perfect achievement even for the best of the best (large-scale sporting events and especially sports featuring seasons of league games would be rather pointless if that became routine). I have written before in editorials that impact factors require thoughtful use as they are made up of individual contributions, and that impact factors should not be misused as a no-need-to-read sort of seal of blanket approval for all papers published in the journal. The articles will always need to be read and their usefulness to the reader judged individually, which will not only vary by article, but most likely also by reader. Two articles that clearly are appreciated widely are Interdiffusion of PCBM and P3HT Reveals Miscibility in a Photovoltaically Active Blend by Michael F. Toney, Edward J. Kramer, Craig J. Hawker, Michael Chabinyc and co-workers (over 130 citations) and Metal-Air Batteries with High Energy Density: Li-Air versus Zn-Air by Kyu Tae Lee, Jaephil Cho and co-workers (over 80 citations); these two papers made major contributions to setting the tone and quality expectations for the journal right from the start in issue 1/2011. I'd like to note that support for the new journal went well beyond the authors whose papers were accepted: many more prospective authors sent in manuscripts, granting the editorial office the privilege and pain of ample choice. Thousands of reviewer reports were written. With around 450 papers published to date, by far not all reviewers will already have an article of their own in the journal, so their contribution to AEnM's success is all the more worth mention and appreciation. Tens of thousands of article downloads per month mean that the community reads and clearly approves of the papers published. So where do we stand now? Certainly, publications in Advanced Energy Materials now enjoy a prominence that will help with even better dissemination. AEnM has placed itself prominently in the Advanced journals family (see Figure 1). This also bodes well for our next-younger sister journals – Advanced Healthcare Materials, which will receive its first Impact Factor next year when the 2013 edition of ISI's JCR comes out, Advanced Optical Materials (freshly launched this year) and Advanced Materials Interfaces, which launches next year to give more publication opportunities to the recent explosion of exciting interface-related materials science papers that we are seeing in our inboxes. Advanced journal family ISI Impact Factors of the last five years. So what comes next? A leap to over 10 from a standing start is also a challenge of course. Authors, readers, and the editorial team now of course want the Impact Factor to stay over 10 (and hopefully grow). Anyone working in any form of competitive or growth-oriented environment knows that there is no bigger enemy than a stellar prior year. Therefore, looking forward, we in the Advanced editorial office have a very clear challenge to meet: to publish more fantastic stuff from you, the authors, for you, the readers. So please do send us more of your best work – we look forward to your next manuscript!