Launching Materialia

Funding

Materialia Christopher A. Schuh [email protected] Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA Department of Materials Science and Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA Kazuhiro Hono National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba 305-0047, Japan National Institute for Materials Science Tsukuba 305-0047 Japan William R. Wagner Departments of Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Surgery and the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburg, PA, USA Departments of Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, Surgery and the McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh PA USA Baptiste Gault Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH, Max-Planck Straße 1, 40237 Düsseldorf, Germany Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH Max-Planck Straße 1 40237 Düsseldorf Germany Joseph D'Angelo Elsevier Ltd., Oxford Spires Business Park, Kidlington OX5 1GB, UK Elsevier Ltd. Oxford Spires Business Park Kidlington OX5 1GB UK George T. Gray III MST-8, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA MST-8 Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos NM 87545 USA The field of materials science and engineering is growing. Because materials research uses tools from many basic sciences and serves technologies in virtually every engineering field, it is increasingly central in the research landscape. Thanks to the rapid globalization of research, it is also increasingly served from emerging research centers around the planet. At Acta Materialia, Inc., we are proud to be in a position to support this growth, and view it as our duty to do so. Acta Materialia, Inc., is a private, not-for-profit company whose core mission is to support researchers in materials science and engineering. Our primary function aimed at this mission is the publication (in collaboration with our publisher, Elsevier) of the materials science journal titles owned by the company. Acta Materialia , Scripta Materialia and Acta Biomaterialia have supported the materials community for decades in achieving these goals. Our titles have grown with the field; today we publish nearly twice as many articles as we did just 12 years ago. We are aware that more could be done in this changing publishing and research landscape to support our growing community. In 2016, we surveyed the authors of our journals to gauge their expectations with respect to future developments in our family of journals. Of the hundreds of authors who replied, a substantial majority indicated that they would positively view the launch of new Acta journals as a means of better serving the community. Two-thirds of respondents supported the offering of direct article transfers between the existing titles and new proposed journals, and a majority specifically supported the launch of a broad companion journal into which our current titles could provide such transfers. Based on this input, and in a first move, Acta Materialia, Inc. is pleased to announce the launch of our newest title, Materialia . This new journal will have a broad scope encompassing all materials research covered in the other three Acta journals. Materialia will be: • an online-only, selective, broad scope journal, allowing quality materials research content to find a home • aligned with the community needs and what the community hopes to see from Acta Materialia, Inc. • an integral part of the Acta journal family, with editors from the three other journals contributing decisions on manuscripts published in Materialia • without specific pre-requisite formatting, accepting both letters and full-length articles. Materialia will be open for direct submissions, and will employ a process of rigorous peer review consistent with the methods and standards of our three existing titles. Beyond this, Materialia will also facilitate and accelerate the publication of articles that have been vetted by our editors and/or peer-reviewed at the other three journals, but not accepted for publication there for reasons of fit or novelty. A new option for authors to transfer such articles directly to Materialia from any of its three sister journals, avoiding a full resubmission and reformatting of the manuscript, will now be in place. The high quality standards of our existing titles will see no changes, but through collaboration with Materialia can present more options for authors looking to publish contributions that move the field forward. Finally, based on the input from the survey, Materialia will follow a hybrid open access model. This model is preferable for our community because not all potential authors have funding to support the cost of author publication charges, while open access is of great importance to many others. Materialia , as member of the family of Acta Journals will also be fully compliant for Green Open Access (see https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/sharing for details). As a not-for-profit company managed and staffed by many practicing materials researchers, we at Acta Materialia Inc. are committed to maintaining an author publication charge for open access publishing as low as possible. We thank Elsevier for helping support us in this vision. Two inaugural editors, one with broad experience in inorganic materials and one with expertise in biomaterials, have been selected to lead us in the launch and development of Materialia . The editor chosen for the broad area of inorganic materials, working closely with Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia , is Dr. Baptiste Gault, who is the Group Leader for Atom Probe Tomography at the Max-Planck-Institute für Eisenforschung in Düsseldorf since 2016. He holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Rouen in France, and before joining MPIE, he held various appointments at the University of Sydney, including a position co-funded by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, an EU-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford, and a brief academic appointment as Assist. Prof. at McMaster University in Canada. From Dec. 2012 to Dec. 2015, he was working as a Senior Publisher in the Materials Science group at Elsevier Ltd. in Oxford, managing the Materials Engineering portfolio that included Acta Materialia & Scripta Materialia amongst other journals. This experience helped him support Acta Materialia Inc. in the preparation for the launch of Materialia . His research group at MPIE has a broad activity with projects aiming to link physical properties to the nanoscale structure and composition of engineering materials finding application in e.g. power generation (Ni-based superalloys), energy conversion (solar cells, thermoelectrics), aerospace (Ti, Co-based superalloys), automotive (high-strength steel, Al-alloys), etc. The editor chosen for his experience in biomaterials, and who will interact closely with Acta Biomaterialia is Dr. Zhengwei Mao, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Polymer Science and Engineering at Zhejiang University since 2010. He received a PhD at Zhejiang University in the field of Materials Science and had a postdoc experience at Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany. Dr. Mao’s research is focused on polymeric biomaterials, and seeks to control microstructure of materials for the purpose of manipulating the responses of cells and tissues, with an application for cancer therapy and tissue regeneration. His research has received international attention and the “young investigator award” from Chinese Association of Biomaterials. The Materialia submission site is now active ( https://ees.elsevier.com/mtla/default.asp ). We invite you to submit articles reporting exciting research to Materialia . Thank you for your support of the Acta Materialia journals and the materials research community.