Advancing into 2022

As we enter 2022, the sixth anniversary of Advanced Materials Technologies has arrived. The world went through a turbulent first half of 2021, but eventually calmed down with effective COVID-19 vaccines bringing new hope for the reopening of borders, for the resumption of international travel and face-to-face meetings. Scientists and researchers were able to go back to the lab and recommence their research relatively unhampered by restrictions. The successful vaccine development and the commitments made at the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow again show that a sustainable world depends heavily on science and technology. Advanced Materials Technologies is committed to publishing research work within multiple disciplines on findings focused on practical fabrication technologies and high-performance devices across a broad range of applications that aim to transform the world for a healthy and sustainable future. Looking back at 2021 we can say that, despite the difficult circumstances the world found itself in, Advanced Materials Technologies thrived. Both the number of submissions and Impact Factor reached new milestones. The journal received over 1600 submissions (∼25% more than in 2020) and published around 400 manuscripts (Figure 1). According to the 2021 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports, the 2020 Impact Factor of Advanced Materials Technologies is 7.848, an increase of 1.879 (>30%) over the 2019 Impact Factor. The ten most highly cited papers in 2020 that were published in 2018 and 2019 (i.e., that made the greatest contribution to the 2020 Impact Factor) are listed in Table 1. Congratulations to these authors for their outstanding work. Another measure of the attention articles published in Advanced Materials Technologies are gaining is online usage. The journal content is being downloaded from Wiley Online Library more and more frequently, with a greater than 40% increase in PDF+HTML full text downloads in 2020 compared to the previous year. The top downloaded Reviews and Research Articles published in 2021 are listed in Table 2. Sungkyunkwan University Republic of Korea Karolinska Institutet Sweden Johannes Kepler University Linz Austria Medical University of Graz Austria Linköping University Sweden University of Twente Netherlands Macquarie University Sydney Australia University of New South Wales Australia Gachon University Republic of Korea Singapore University of Technology and Design Singapore Technical University of Munich Germany Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Switzerland Without doubt, Advanced Materials Technologies has soundly established its popularity with the materials technology related community. But it is not only a place where the scientific community can read high-quality research papers and take advantage of the reported results for their own work. The findings published in Advanced Materials Technologies are spread widely across scientific news sites and blogs as well as social media platforms (Figure 2). In other words, dissemination is not only within the scientific community, but circulates to a broader audience as well. The popularity of topics such as COVID diagnostics and other healthcare devices, solar cells, and 3D printing is a reflection of society's preoccupation with improved health outcomes, renewable energy and powerful yet accessible fabrication techniques. One type of material that is of increasing importance in both healthcare and sustainability is ion selective membranes. They can be used, for example, to extract critical elements such as lithium directly from brine, purify water, and moderate ion transport in batteries. They also have biomedical applications, including in point-of-care diagnostics. The latest research in this field is highlighted in a special section of the October 2021 issue of Advanced Materials Technologies. The Hall of Fame series continued in 2021, with the addition of several excellent Review articles written by leading experts in the field, including International Advisory Board Members Anita Ho-Baillie, Tony Jun Huang, Yuanjin Zhao, Guozhen Shen, Huanting Wang, and Nae-Eung Lee. Areas covered encompass solar cells, medical devices, semiconducting polymers, sensors, sonoporation and cellulose, with more in the pipeline this year (Figure 3). Sustainability of electronics in our increasingly “throw-away” society is of growing concern, as is biocompatibility of electronics used in medicine. Current research to address these issues is highlighted in a “Green Electronics” special issue to be published next month jointly in Advanced Materials Technologies and Advanced Sustainable Systems. As well as bringing you the latest materials technology research developments, we have been working hard to improve your experience as authors and reviewers. At the beginning of last year, Advanced Materials Technologies and Advanced Materials implemented new reviewer questionnaires and an associated set of Reviewer Guidelines. These were designed to better support reviewers with their evaluation of manuscripts and aid editors with their decisions. The feedback from reviewers and editors alike was overwhelmingly positive. We would like to thank all who took the time to share their thoughts and valuable suggestions with us. This gave us the confidence to roll out optimized reviewer questionnaires to the wider Advanced family and other sister journals in mid-2021. We hope this initiative has resulted in an enhanced peer review experience for our reviewers and authors alike. Greater transparency in the peer review and editorial decision-making process is seen as a potential means to improve author experience and reduce bias. As a first step in this direction Advanced Materials Technologies, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics, and Energy Technology are currently trialing a workflow where reviewers are notified of the editorial decision as soon as it is made, and anonymized reviewer reports are shared with them. Advanced Materials Technologies is part of a tightly connected network of journals. This allows it to offer authors the option to easily transfer their paper to another journal in the portfolio if the manuscript isn't accepted for publication at Advanced Materials Technologies. There is no need to go through a new submission process, saving authors time and effort, and increasing the chance of their work being published, faster. More information on our transfer network and how it facilitates the publication of your manuscript can be found here. Editor's Choice has been implemented across the whole Advanced series and other sister journals. Articles are selected based on the evaluation of reviewers and editors and reflect the significance of the results presented. We believe these top few outstanding papers will be particularly interesting to our readers. Thematic Editor's Choice virtual article collections are also published from time to time. A recent example is the “Biofabrication 2021” virtual issue, which was created to celebrate the occasion of the Biofabrication 2021 virtual conference held at the end of September. Articles in the collection cover modern biofabrication technologies, in particular aspects of additive manufacturing like novel bioinks, crosslinking strategies and promising new techniques, with applications ranging from organ and tumor models to tissue engineering (e.g., skin, bone, cartilage). These articles were published in 2020 and 2021 across our portfolio of materials and polymer science journals and were free to access around the time of the event. In recognition of the rapid growth of Advanced Materials Technologies and to deliver a better editorial service, Muxian Shen joined the journal's editorial team in the second half of 2021 as its first ever Deputy Editor. Muxian is also the Deputy Editor of Advanced Functional Materials, and peer review editor for Advanced Energy Materials, Small Methods, and Advanced Optical Materials. She is based in our Shanghai office. Many of our authors will also know two further additions to the team: Kevin Hurler is the new Technical Editor for Advanced Materials Technologies, responsible for manuscripts after they have been accepted for publication, while Katie Lally took on administration of the journal. It is worth highlighting that the editorial team of Advanced Materials Technologies is truly diverse and global, representing seven nationalities in five offices across four continents (Figure 4). Standing at the start of a brand new year, a desirably more dynamic academic publishing world can be expected. We are looking forward to publishing more exciting research that bridges cutting-edge materials science, innovative technologies, and their real word applications. Your continued support and attention as authors, reviewers, and readers are greatly appreciated. We would be happy to hear your feedback any time at advmattechnol@wiley.com. Last and most important, we wish you a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2022.