Editorial

Dear Readers, As we are now entering the 20th year of Advanced Engineering Materials, it is a good time to look back on what the journal has achieved over the years. In its first year, AEM published four issues with 24 scientific articles plus news items − as for most new journals, the first volume was quite small. Going forward a few years finds volume 10 with more than 170 scientific articles and volume 19 in 2017 with more than 280 articles. In total AEM has published more than 3200 articles so far which were cited more than 47.000 times. 2017 has been a record year in terms of submission numbers (see also Figure 1), number of published articles and Impact Factor. For the very first time we received more than 1000 submissions in one year, as a consequence published more than ever before and also saw a significantly increased Impact Factor (now 2.3, up 28%). At the same time we maintained short turn-around times and made first decisions within one month on average and final decisions within three months. Today Advanced Engineering Materials is presenting a broad mix of topics related to materials relevant for engineering applications, such as metals, alloys, bulk metallic glasses but also thermoelectric materials, auxetic materials and magnetorheological solids. However, also new manufacturing techniques are of highest interest for our readers, such as selective laser melting, 3D printing and roll-to-roll manufacturing. Reviews and original articles on all these topics are gathered in Table 1 that lists the articles with the largest influence on the next Impact Factor. As you can also see from this table, AEM's authors come from all over the world. Although the journal had a strong European basis in its early years, it has now turned truly international with submissions from roughly 50 countries from all continents. The last year has seen the publication of several outstanding special issues and many excellent articles. Several of them were featured on the cover pages of the respective issues. Although we cannot show here all cover pages, we would like to present some highlights here. The cover shown in Figure 2 was used for the Special Issue on Multi-Functional Filters For Metal Melt Filtration, guest-edited by Christos Aneziris (TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Germany) and Tobias Fey (Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany). The cover shows a special filter component (200 mm × 200 mm) tested in a steel casting simulator in terms of transfer project T01 before the application in a real steel plant. (Photo credit: Steffen Dudczig, Institute of Ceramic, Glass and Construction Materials, TU Bergakademie Freiberg). The background of the cover image shown in Figure 3 illustrates the chemical vapor infiltration process of pyrocarbon deposited on the surface of carbon fiber. The diagram in the foreground shows the microstructure of carbon fiber and pyrocarbon at different infiltration temperatures observed by a polarized microscope. It can be seen that the texture of pyrocarbon deposited by pressure gradient chemical vapor infiltration is homogenous and can be controlled, as reported in the article “Rapid Densification of Carbon/Carbon Composites Plate by Pressure-Gradient Chemical Vapor Infiltration” by Fu Qin Zhang and co-workers (DOI: 10.1002/adem.1600329). Figure 4 shows the cover of the Special Issue on Materials Science & Engineering at the Montanuniversität Leoben, guest-edited by Helmut Clemens, Jürgen Eckert, Christian Mitterer and Clara Schuecker. It shows examples of materials science and engineering activities at the Montanuniversität Leoben which are featured in this special issue. A recent change in our editorial office has occurred and the team currently consists of Editor-in-Chief Sandra Kalveram and Deputy Editor Jolke Perelaer (both based in Weinheim) and Editors Lulu Ma (Beijing) and Carolina Novo Da Silva (Berlin). After nearly two years Jos Lenders has shifted his editorial priorities to other journals within the Advanced Journals family. With the great development during the past years, new journals have joined the Advanced Journals family. Hence, this is an open invitation to visit the new journals! Please pay particular attention for Advanced Theory and Simulations, Advanced Quantum Technologies, and Advanced Therapeutics that were all launched in 2017. We are confident that those journals will make a strong contribution to the scientific effort as well. And… there is more good news for 2018! Starting from January 2018 all journals of the Advanced Family as well as the Macromolecular Journals will waive the cost for printing color figures. At this point we would also like to thank our Advisory Board members, authors, reviewers and readers for their continued interestin as well as support of Advanced Engineering Materials. Wishing you a successful and happy 2018,