Introducing Materials Advances; a new gold open access journal joins the Journal of Materials Chemistry family

We are delighted to share with you the first issue of Materials Advances, the newest gold open access journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Materials Advances joins the Journal of Materials Chemistry (JMC) family and publishes good quality research across the full breadth of materials science. The journal covers experimental and theoretical studies that report new understanding of materials, including synthesis, properties, and applications, building on and complementing the materials content already published across the Royal Society of Chemistry journal portfolio. Materials Advances is led by co-Editors-in-Chief Anders Hagfeldt, EPFL, Switzerland, Jeroen Cornelissen, University of Twente, the Netherlands, and Natalie Stingelin, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, who also are the Editors-in-Chief of JMC A, B and C, respectively.

The Royal Society of Chemistry strives to serve the community the best it can, and this includes continuously adapting to the changing publishing landscape. We are committed to supporting long term, sustainable open access models (for more information on our open access program and policies, visit our website). By launching Materials Advances as a gold open access journal, we aim to better serve members of our community who want to publish high impact, open access materials research with the reputation, standards, commitment and expertise you would expect from any RSC journal. We are waiving article processing charges (APCs) until mid-2022, meaning that all articles are free to publish and free to read.

We have an established and growing materials journal portfolio, led by our top tier journal, Materials Horizons (impact factor 14.356) launched in 2014. JMC A, B and C cover high quality research across all fields of materials chemistry; they are widely popular journals with high submission counts, publishing highly cited and read content.

One consideration in creating Materials Advances as a broad-scope materials science journal was to provide an efficient transfer service to our authors for suitable manuscripts from other journals within our materials portfolio. In order to better facilitate this, Materials Advances shares its Editorial Board with JMC A, B and C. This means that the same high profile Associate Editors handling submissions to either JMC A, B or C will also handle submissions to Materials Advances. This shared responsibility across our materials journals portfolio ensures that there is a common overview and a consistent application of expertise. We also believe that this will streamline the assessment process for our authors and our reviewers, while upholding the same rigorous peer-review processes that our JMC community are used to. If authors submit to JMC A, B or C, and are offered a transfer to Materials Advances, the same Associate Editor will handle the article in both journals. Any reviewer comments received on your manuscript will also be transferred. We know from experience that this arrangement reduces any possible delays and ensures an efficient transfer of the history of articles.

This first issue, published less than 3 months after the journal launch, contains highly topical articles covering a broad materials research spectrum to set the tone for the direction of the journal. We are very grateful to the many people who have contributed to the launch of Materials Advances, particularly our Editorial Board, who have provided invaluable support during the launch and have enabled the journal to start off strongly. In addition, we immensely value our authors, reviewers and readers, some new, and some familiar with the JMC family, many of whom have already embraced the journal. You all will be pivotal in the success of Materials Advances!

We would also like to thank the JMC editorial team in our Cambridge office who have put in a tremendous amount of work in a short time to launch Materials Advances.

Lastly, we wanted to reiterate that we will ensure that Materials Advances fully meets the needs of the materials community. We very much welcome comments, suggestions, and feedback, so please do contact us at materialsadvances-rsc@rsc.org with your thoughts. In the coming weeks and months we will start the process of having the journal indexed in all relevant databases to achieve the greatest visibility for our authors. In the meantime you can stay up to date by signing-up to receive journal news here.

 

Professor Anders Hagfeldt, Editor-in-Chief

Professor Jeroen Cornelissen, Editor-in-Chief

Professor Natalie Stingelin, Editor-in-Chief

Dr Sam Keltie, Executive Editor

Dr Anna Rulka, Executive Editor, Open Access

Lynn Murphy, Deputy Editor

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