Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C: onwards and upwards

Welcome to Volume 3 of Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C! This Editorial, published in Issue 1 of all three journals, marks our third year of publication as three separate titles under the Journal of Materials Chemistry brand.

One of the major highlights of this year across the journals has been the further appointment of Associate Editors to each journal's Editorial Board. For Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Goutam De, Frank Osterloh and Magda Titirici have joined Michael Chabinyc, Mohamed Eddaoudi, Yan Li, Zhiqun Lin, Xiong Wen (David) Lou, Christine Luscombe, Shizhang Qiao and Stephen Skinner. For Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Jiang Chang, Xinyan Tracy Cui, Xiaogang Qu and Laura Suggs have joined Guoping Chen, Jeroen Cornelissen, Dal-Hee Min, Marc in het Panhuis and Zhengzhong Shao. For Journal of Materials Chemistry C, Luis Hueso, Neil Robertson, Federico Rosei and Yadong Yin have joined Gitti Frey, Justin Holmes, Malika Jeffries-EL, Natalie Stingelin, Wai-Yeung Wong and Xiaowei Zhan. Across the journals, our team of 30 Associate Editors and several in-house Publishing Editors give our authors a wide choice of who they would like to submit their articles to. The Associate Editor appointments aim to give representation to the scope of each journal by the expertise of each of the Associate Editors. If you would like to suggest your next submission to Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B or C is handled by one of our Associate Editors, please choose their editorial office during the submission process.

We have also appointed several Advisory Board members from around the globe to each journal to further connect with the communities we work with. We would like to thank our Advisory Board members for the work they do with the journals.

Within the Editorial Office, we saw the promotion of former Executive Editor, Dr Liz Dunn promoted to the role of Publisher for the Journal of Materials Chemistry family of journals, along with several other Royal Society of Chemistry journals. In June earlier this year, Liz was replaced by Dr Fiona McKenzie as the new Executive Editor. Fiona has worked on Royal Society of Chemistry journals since 2010 and is delighted to have the opportunity to work closer with the materials community.

Changes this year

From 2015 onwards, Feature Articles will be replaced by Reviews in Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C as the principle review-type article in the journals. The format of these articles will remain unchanged. We are always working to develop and improve the journals to benefit our authors and readers. And we believe that through this change, our review content will become more discoverable.

You may also have spotted some changes to the subject scope statements for Journal of Materials Chemistry B & C. For Journal of Materials Chemistry B, you will now find ‘biomimetic and bio-inspired materials’ to represent the work we are publishing and aspire to publish in bioelectronics, bionic materials and materials for soft robotics. For Journal of Materials Chemistry C, you will find ‘magnetics’, to represent the areas of magnetic materials, spintronics and optomagnetism.

Themed issues

We have published several topical themed issues throughout 2014 as well as Emerging Investigator issues in all three journals, listed in Table 1. We would like to thank all of our authors who contributed to these issues and congratulate those early careers researchers who published in our Emerging Investigators issues. Particular thanks must also go to our Guest Editors for these issues – thank you for all your efforts in making these a success. Look out for themed issues on perovskite solar cells, bioelectronics and thermoelectrics, among many others, in 2015!
Table 1 2014 themed issues
Journal Issue number Themed issue Guest editor(s)
J. Mater. Chem. A 17 Emerging investigators Liz Dunn (Royal Society of Chemistry, UK), Hiroshi Imahori (Kyoto University, Japan), Dongyuan Zhao (Fudan University, China)
J. Mater. Chem. A 28 Flexible energy storage and conversion Xiong Wen (David) Lou (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Guozhen Shen (Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, China), Yongyao Xia (Fudan University, China), Shu-Hong Yu (University of Science and Technology of China, China)
J. Mater. Chem. B 17 Emerging investigators Liz Dunn (Royal Society of Chemistry, UK), Christine Schmidt (University of Florida, USA), Dongyuan Zhao (Fudan University, China)
J. Mater. Chem. B 46 Nanoscale biomaterials Jason Burdick (University of Pennsylvania, USA), Jordan Green (The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA)
J. Mater. Chem. C 7 Flexible electronics Yoshio Bando (National Institute for Materials Science, Japan), Lei Liao (Wuhan University, China), Guozhen Shen (Institute of Semiconductors, CAS, China), Chongwu Zhou (University of Southern California, USA)
J. Mater. Chem. C 17 Emerging investigators Liz Dunn (Royal Society of Chemistry, UK), Peter Skabara (WestCHEM, University of Strathclyde, UK), Dongyuan Zhao (Fudan University, China)


Lectureship

Along with recognising the achievements of early career researchers in materials chemistry with our Emerging Investigators issues, the Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship was awarded to Professor Henry Snaith (University of Oxford, UK) for the remarkable contribution he has made to the materials chemistry field, especially in the area of semiconductor science. He will give his Lectureship talk at the upcoming 2014 Fall MRS meeting in Boston in December. Congratulations to Henry on his award! Look out for nominations opening for the 2015 Lectureship in January.

Community

Another highlight this year for us was to get out and meet our authors and readers, some longstanding and some new, at conferences all over the world. We have seen many cutting-edge presentations in some very high quality symposia and meetings. We're delighted to be able to be an integral part of the dissemination of this important science, as the three new journals begin to establish themselves in the community. The journals along with Dalton Transactions had the pleasure of presenting a Porous Inorganic Materials symposium series at three institutions in China this year. We would like to thank our hosts Professors Shu-Hong Yu (University of Science and Technology of China), Gengfeng Zheng (Fudan University) and Hongjie Zhang (Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry), our international speakers Dr Andy Burrows (University of Bath, UK), Professor Jing Li (Rutgers University, USA) and Professor Christoph Janiak (University of Dusseldorf, Germany) as well as all the local speakers for their contributions to this event.

Materials science portfolio at the Royal Society of Chemistry

In the last few years, the materials science portfolio of journals at the Royal Society of Chemistry has grown to a diverse offering. Our journals and books cover materials synthesis through to applications and properties, as well as the design and understanding of materials. Inorganic, organic polymeric and hybrid materials can all be found in our portfolio. As well as the Journal of Materials Chemistry family of journals, our portfolio includes Biomaterials Science, CrystEngComm, Dalton Transactions, Energy & Environmental Science, Materials Horizons, Nanoscale, Polymer Chemistry and Soft Matter. Our books offering now includes several titles such as RSC Smart Materials, RSC Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Series and RSC Energy &Environmental Series.

Looking ahead to 2015 and beyond

There's much to look forward to in the year ahead, as the Journal of Materials Chemistry family of journals matures. The journals will receive their first individual impact factors in the summer when the 2014 Journal Citations Reports© are released. We are sure that the journals will continue to attract high quality papers and an even larger readership. We will be attending several conferences throughout the year, so look out for us and please do come and say hello! Keep up to date with news on themed issues, hot papers, Editorial and Advisory Board updates and all the news from the journals by following our blog (http://blogs.rsc.org/jm/) or following us on Twitter (@JMaterChem).

We would like to thank all of you who contribute to making the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, B & C a success, from our authors, readers and referees, to our Editorial and Advisory Board members and our team in the Editorial Office.

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Dongyuan Zhao, Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Materials Chemistry; Hiroshi Imahori, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Materials Chemistry A; Christine Schmidt, Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Materials Chemistry B; Peter Skabara, Deputy Editor-in- Chief, Journal of Materials Chemistry C; Fiona McKenzie, Executive Editor, Journal of Materials Chemistry, Sam Keltie, Deputy Editor, Journal of Materials Chemistry.


This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2015