Advanced Materials Technologies Hits 2500 Submissions – A Glimpse of What We Publish

As we pen this Editorial, a smoky haze engulfs Sydney. There is no doubt in our minds—indeed in that of the vast majority of scientists—that climate change is contributing to longer and more intense bushfire (wildfire) seasons, not just in Australia but globally. Technological solutions already exist not just to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but also to mitigate the consequences of a warming planet. For their widespread adoption several aspects must fall into place. Aside from favorable governmental policies, considerations such as efficiency, practical and scalable fabrication, and cheap and abundant materials play a role. Many of you are carrying out crucial research in this pressing area and are coming up with innovative and cost-effective options, which in the right environment can and should be turned into viable methods and products. Healthcare is another area of immediate concern, with the desire for fast, accurate, and non-invasive point-of-care diagnosis and therapy. This demand is starting to be fulfilled through wearable and implantable devices. These and other technological advances that enable us to live a safer, healthier and more comfortable life form the backbone of the research reported within the pages of Advanced Materials Technologies. As we enter the fifth year of publication of Advanced Materials Technologies we reflect on another successful year for the journal. 2019 was underpinned by several key achievements and initiatives. We received (well) over 1000 submissions for the first time and published around 400 high-quality articles. These numbers represent significant growth for the journal (Figure 1). In fact we have reached a milestone 2500 submissions since the journal was launched in April 2016. This is a positive indication of the burgeoning role Advanced Materials Technologies is playing as a desirable venue for publication of materials technology research developments. The geographic origin of the papers published to date (Figure 2) is quite diverse, a reflection of the international flavor of the journal. One indicator of the quality of a journal and the research it publishes is its Impact Factor.1 Last year Advanced Materials Technologies received its first full Impact Factor of 5.395 (2019 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports). For further details and a glimpse of the top articles contributing to this number, please refer to our Editorial in issue 8, 2019. Several articles published in Advanced Materials Technologies last year captured the imagination of the wider community. They were reported on by news outlets, commented on by bloggers, shared on social media etc.; activity that is nicely distilled in the Altmetric Attention Score (see Table 1). Two projects of particular note in 2019 were a special issue on Microfluidics (Figure 3, left) and a special series of 35 original and review-type articles on Advanced Intelligent Systems. This series culminated in the launch of a new open access journal with the same name but broader scope (Figure 3, right). Interestingly, 12 of the 25 most downloaded articles to Advanced Materials Technologies over the past 12 months belong to the Advanced Intelligent Systems special series. These articles have been made freely accessible for a limited time, which has likely contributed to this statistic,2 but it is undoubtedly also a reflection of the wide interest this rapidly evolving area of research is garnering. There is no question that freely available articles tend to be downloaded more frequently than their subscription-only counterparts,2 but there is also a growing body of evidence that citation rates are also affected.3 In an environment where Open Access publication is becoming ever more important, a landmark agreement was signed in January 2019 between Wiley and Projekt DEAL. This deal provides Open Access publication in, and read access to, most of Wiley's journals to a vast majority of German academic institutions. Advanced Materials Technologies, together with its sister journals, is covered by this agreement. It allows corresponding authors based at these German institutions to publish their articles in our journals under an Open Access license, while costs are covered by their institutions. Learn more about the agreement with Projekt DEAL here and find out if your institution is a participant in this or other national Open Access programs at Wiley here. So, what does 2020 have in store for us? We have several projects in the works and are excited to announce a couple of them here. We have initiated a Hall of Fame series to celebrate the fifth volume of Advanced Materials Technologies. Written on invitation by leading researchers, it is a collection of review-type articles that highlight key developments in design, fabrication, integration, and function of devices in areas spanning energy, healthcare, electronics, optics, microfluidics, sensors, food safety, water, and environmental technologies. The first two articles in the series are published in this issue – a Review by Advisory Board Member Prof. Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh on Telecommunications and Data Processing in Flexible Electronic Systems and one by Prof. Qiang Zhang on Composite Lithium Metal Anodes for Practical Applications – with more to follow over the coming months. All articles will be free to access for a limited time, and the collection will be updated regularly as new Hall of Fame articles are published. We are also looking forward to publishing a Special Issue on Bioelectronics in March. Guest edited by Eleni Stavrinidou, Dion Khodagholy, and Eric Głowacki it will showcase exciting developments in this flourishing field, from biosensors and epicardial recording to neural and prosthetic interfaces to plant nanobionics. Our peer reviewers invest an incredible amount of time and expertise to ensure the quality and integrity of articles that we publish is high, for which we are truly thankful. In order to give our reviewers public credit for their contribution we are now offering to deposit reviewer activities to ORCID. If you are interested in participating in this reviewer recognition service, simply opt-in the next time you review for us and log in to ORCID to confirm your authorization. Once activated and if “Yes” is selected as the default answer, all your future review activities for the journal will be automatically associated with your ORCID ID. ORCID profiles will be updated once every three months; to preserve confidentiality only the journal name and year will be mentioned. In order to continually improve the quality of our publications and the service we provide, the peer review editorial team was recently strengthened by the addition of Dr. Sai Kishore Ravi. With expertise on biohybrid photoelectrochemical cells, biocapacitors, and tactile sensors Sai is a natural fit to the journal. We also welcome Dr. Plamena Dogandzhiyski as new post-acceptance editor. See Figure 4 for the names and faces of the current editorial team. In a nutshell, Advanced Materials Technologies is thriving. With your continued interest and support we anticipate the journal will remain on its upward trajectory. Thank you—our authors, reviewers, Advisory Board members, and readers—without you none of this would be possible. We look forward to more great publications in the upcoming year and wish you a happy and successful 2020!