Taking Up the Challenge – Advanced Optical Materials and a Successful Year for Your Photonics and Optoelectronics Research Plus More

2020 was a challenging year. Who could have known – one year back – how much everyone's lifestyle would change, affecting both personal and working environments? We are all the more impressed by the enthusiasm researchers around the world have shown coping with the situation. Despite many labs being closed and extra work caused by new administrative burdens as well as the need for digital teaching which came practically overnight, we have still been receiving a host of excellent submissions. While some researchers used their time working from home to write up their results, others decided to focus on existing literature and compile review articles as a useful guidance for others working in their field. Table 1 lists the most read articles published in Advanced Optical Materials last year, showing the broad scope of topics the journal is aiming for, ranging from metasurfaces and SERS probes to advanced applications such as quantum dot light-emitting diodes or biosensing. Novel Plasmonic Nanocavities for Optical Trapping-Assisted Biosensing Applications (Review) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901481 10.1002/adom.201901481 Metastable Refractive Index Manipulation in Hydrogenated Amorphous Silicon for Reconfigurable Photonics (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901680 10.1002/adom.201901680 Fiber-Optic SERS Probes Fabricated Using Two-Photon Polymerization for Rapid Detection of Bacteria (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901934 10.1002/adom.201901934 A Tunable Metasurface with Switchable Functionalities: From Perfect Transparency to Perfect Absorption (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901548 10.1002/adom.201901548 UV-Sensitive Wearable Devices for Colorimetric Monitoring of UV Exposure (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901969 10.1002/adom.201901969 Toward Intelligent Metasurfaces: The Progress from Globally Tunable Metasurfaces to Software-Defined Metasurfaces with an Embedded Network of Controllers (Progress Report) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 2000783 10.1002/adom.202000783 Hereditary Character of Photonics Structure in Pachyrhynchus sarcitis Weevils: Color Changes via One Generation Hybridization (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 2000432 10.1002/adom.202000432 Waterproof Flexible InP@ZnSeS Quantum Dot Light-Emitting Diode (Communication) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1901362 10.1002/adom.201901362 Seeing the Unseen: The Role of Liquid Crystals in Gas-Sensing Technologies (Review) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 1902117 10.1002/adom.201902117 Electro-Optic Metasurfaces Based on Barium Titanate Nanoparticle Films (Communication) Adv. Optical Mater. 2020, 8, 2000623 10.1002/adom.202000623 In 2020, some research fields received special attention in Advanced Optical Materials, resulting in three special issues, as displayed here. There is more to come this year and you will soon be able to read about “Optical Properties and Applications of Crystalline Materials” guest edited by Xianhe Bu (Nankai University), “Photophysical Processes in Metal Halide Perovskites” guest edited by Marina S. Leite (University at California) and Hernán Míguez (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla) as well as “Organic Electronics and Beyond” guest edited by Malte Gather (University of St. Andrews), Björn Lüssem (Kent State University), Sebastian Reineke (TU Dresden) and Moritz Riede (University of Oxford) which will be a special issue dedicated to Professor Karl Leo's 60th birthday (TU Dresden). Furthermore, the Advanced Optical Materials Hall of Fame is growing continuously, showcasing invited review articles written by top experts in their respective fields. This year, we will additionally highlight the excellent research done by women in photonics by collecting selected articles in a virtual issue. Work published in Advanced Optical Materials certainly has an impact and while numbers are not everything we are still delighted that the journal received an improved impact factor of 8.286 in 2020. Those articles that contributed the most with their citations are assembled in Table 2 and we congratulate all the authors on this success. Advanced Optical Materials has over the years become one of the top publications in the field – the main credits go to you – as a reader, reviewer or author! Thank you very much! Broadband Nonlinear Optical Response in Few-Layer Antimonene and Antimonene Quantum Dots: A Promising Optical Kerr Media with Enhanced Stability (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1700301 10.1002/adom.201700301 Full-Color Inorganic Carbon Dot Phosphors for White-Light-Emitting Diodes (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1700416 10.1002/adom.201700416 Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1600704 10.1002/adom.201600704 Recent Advances in Materials with Room-Temperature Phosphorescence: Photophysics for Triplet Exciton Stabilization (Review) Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1700116 10.1002/adom.201700116 Broadband Nonlinear Photoresponse of 2D TiS2 for Ultrashort Pulse Generation and All-Optical Thresholding Devices (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2018, 6, 1701166 10.1002/adom.201701166 High-Performance Bifunctional Metasurfaces in Transmission and Reflection Geometries (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1600506 10.1002/adom.201600506 Broadband Hot-Electron Collection for Solar Water Splitting with Plasmonic Titanium Nitride (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2017, 5, 1601031 10.1002/adom.201601031 Continuous-Wave Lasing in Cesium Lead Bromide Perovskite Nanowires (Full Paper) Adv. Optical Mater. 2018, 6, 1700982 10.1002/adom.201700982 In addition to that, we are especially grateful to our Editorial Board members who are advising us on the journal's future path. One aspect that becomes more and more important is publishing open access. Authors have already been able to choose the Online Open option in Advanced Optical Materials. In addition to that we launched a new fully open access journal in optics and photonics last year, taking into account the ever-growing amount of submissions we are receiving. Advanced Photonics Research is covering novel, significant and high-quality results in all areas of the thriving field of photonics and optics. The first issue was published in November, so don't miss the chance to get familiar with the journal. We hope you find it as appealing as we do and consider submitting your next paper. There is more news to share: Towards the end of last year, we simplified the submission and transfer process for authors. Advanced Optical Materials now has a single concise set of article types and the same applies to all other Advanced and Small journals and most of their sister journals. The most notable change is the discontinuation of the article types “Communication” and “Full Paper”, which were replaced by the category “Research Article” which can now contain original research studies of any length. More information on the article types can be found in the Guide for Authors. We believe this is a significant step towards making life easier for our authors, readers and reviewers as it greatly reduces the need for formatting in general and reformatting after transfer to a sister journal. It also brings us one step closer to free-format submissions. This initiative is part of a global project across Wiley and you will see similar changes to Wiley's complete portfolio of journals. It underlines the efforts Wiley is undertaking to make life easier for researchers when preparing, submitting and reading manuscripts. Looking back at 2020, one can say that despite all challenges Advanced Optical Materials had a very successful year. We are confident that 2021 will be an even better one and we hope that we will be able to engage with many of you in person soon again. Meanwhile we hope you will be able to join us for a joint online event of Advanced Optical Materials and Advanced Photonics Research early this year. Stay tuned for more information on www.advopticalmat.com. We are looking forward to a successful 2021 with lots of shiny new papers in the field of optics and photonics, starting off with this very first issue of the year. We wish you enjoy reading it and that you have a great start into the year, too! The editorial team of Advanced Optical Materials