Taylor & Francis Group is committed to building a bridge for international exchanges, disseminating China's high-level achievements and major breakthroughs to the world, helping China's outstanding academic and scientific research to "go global", and providing a broader international communication platform for Chinese scientific researchers. Through the interview with the editor-in-chief, the Chinese researchers are more comprehensively introduced to the excellent international journals of Taylor & Francis Group, and the field of journal acceptance and review process are deeply understood, so as to help more outstanding Chinese scientific research achievements to be published in international journals smoothly.
This issue brings you to Materials Research Letters, an international journal dedicated to materials engineering and technology, materials physics, materials chemistry and emerging materials, which publishes original and groundbreaking materials and technology research results.
Editor-in-Chief: Prof Chu Yun-tin, City University of Hong Kong
Professor Jia Quanxi, State University of New York at Buffalo
Impact Factor (2020): 7.323.pp
JCR(2020): Q1
CiteScore (2020): 13.6
First draft cycle: 11 days
Acceptance rate: 23%
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
ISSN: 2639-5932
Zhu Yuntian, editor-in-chief:
He is currently a Chair Professor at the City University of Hong Kong and received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. From 1994 to 2007, he served as a postdoctoral fellow, researcher and research group leader at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), and from 2007 to 2020, he was an associate professor, professor, and distinguished professor at North Carolina State University.
The main research is the fundamental aspects of materials research, as well as the design of materials with excellent strength and tensile plasticity. He and his colleagues are pioneers in the emerging field of heterostructural materials. As of June 27, 2020, his publications have been collectively cited more than 47,000 times with an H-index of 113, according to Google Scholar. He recently received the TMS Institute of Metals Lecture and Robert Franklin Mehl Award, the Albert Sauveur Award, the IUMRS Sômiya Award, the TMS SMD Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award, and the TMS Leadership Award. Elected Fellow of the Five Societies of America: TMS, MRS, APS, ASM, AAAS.
Editor-in-Chief Jia Quanxi:
He is currently the Imperial Innovation Professor and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo (UB), and serves as The Science Director of the Center for Excellence in Materials informatics in New York State. Prior to joining UB in 2016, he spent 23 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the last two years as co-director of the Department of Energy's Center for Integrated Nanotechnology, followed by director of the center.
His research interests include the synthesis and processing of structure-performance relationships between nanostructured materials, multifunctional materials and thin films; the development of novel deposition technologies for the growth of electronic materials; and the development and manufacture of novel solid-state microelectronics/electro-optical devices. He has authored/co-authored more than 500 journal articles and holds 50 U.S. patents. It is Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Elected fellows of the American Society for Materials Research (MRS), the Physical Society (APS), the Ceramic Society (ACerS), the Association for Scientific Advancement (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the American Inventors Society (NAI).
It is a great honor to invite Professor Zhu Yuntian and Professor Jia Quanxi to conduct interviews at the same time, and the two editors-in-chief will introduce MRL journals to us from multiple dimensions such as the original intention of the journal, the peer review process, and the future development of the journal, and provide suggestions for researchers in related fields to publish articles in the future and jointly promote the development of materials science.
The following is the text of this "editor-in-chief interview".
Q1: Can you share what was the original purpose of the journal Materials Research Letters? Our mission as a journal and what do you want to achieve or achieve with this journal?
Professor Zhu Yuntian: Thank you. The creation of this journal was made possible by personal experience. Our articles in the field of structural materials are particularly difficult in top journals (publications) in the field of physics or chemistry. Because articles on structural materials are not fashionable and are not easy to send out, our articles are often rejected by editors without pre-review or submission. We realized that structural materials need a high-quality journal, which can solve the serious shortage of top communication journals in the field of structural materials, so as to meet the demand for communication top journals for research in the field of structural materials. At the same time, the Journal of Materials Research Letters also covers the field of functions materials, providing another channel for functional materials research to publish high-quality articles.
Q2: Since its inception, this journal has an impact factor of more than 7 points, and it continues to attract the attention of scholars in related fields. What do you think are the main success factors for this journal?
Professor Jia Quanxi: I think there are two main factors:
First, the excellent control ability of the editorial board of the journal. When reviewing an article, the editorial board and reviewers should look at several points: first, whether the article is innovative; second, whether the article has major breakthroughs in basic research or scientific research; and third, whether the article has potential influence. The above are some of the aspects emphasized by our editorial board and reviewers.
Second, the editorial board's fair and professional review. Our editorial board team has experts in various fields, and when editors encounter that the manuscript is not in the field they are familiar with, there will be experts in the corresponding field to review the manuscript to ensure that the article can be fairly reviewed and the quality is guaranteed
Q3: Everyone knows that this journal is very distinctive and rigorously peer-reviewed. Can you tell us about the peer review process for this journal? At the same time, to share with our scholars, from your point of view, what are the most common reasons for rejection of this journal?
Professor Zhu Yuntian:
The process of peer review is mainly divided into the following steps:
The first step is a format review from the editorial board. In order to ensure the publication quality of the article, we have certain format requirements. After the format is pre-approved, the article will officially reach the hands of the editor-in-chief of the editorial department.
In the second step, the editor-in-chief first reads the cover letter and article content. If you pass the editor-in-chief level, you will be assigned to each editor to control it. If the manuscript has obvious defects, such as poor English, full of grammatical errors, etc.; it is obviously a low-quality article, rather than an in-depth article, the editor-in-chief will reject the manuscript at the first level. When the editor-in-chief may also be inaccurate, send the article to the review committee or experts in the field for pre-review. Pre-trial experts generally respond quickly, giving feedback as quickly as possible or even within half an hour. For an expert who has worked in a certain field for many years, has a lot of certainty and reputation, when he receives the article, he mainly looks at the title of the article, abstract, chart, and can judge whether the article has a breakthrough in a few minutes. After the pre-review expert pre-review, the article will be returned to the editor-in-chief. If the editor-in-chief believes that the article should be sent to the editor without the need for pre-review by the editorial board, then the article can reach the editor directly.
In the third step, we asked the editor to reject a part of the manuscript. Editors receive this article and decide whether to send it for review, because we will send the manuscript to senior editors who are familiar with the field, and a considerable part of the manuscript is directly rejected by the editor. When the editor encounters a situation that is not very certain, he can go to the expert of the review committee for further pre-review; if he is confident in making this judgment, then he can officially send the article for review.
Finally, in the formal review process, we need two reviewers to review the manuscript before making a decision. When two reviewers are unable to reach a concluding opinion, a third or fourth reviewer may be invited to review the manuscript further. If the review opinion of the article is very controversial, and the editor himself does not have enough professional background knowledge to judge, then the editor may also find the real top experts in the field in the review committee to do the final arbitration.
As far as I know, having a review committee is a unique advantage of this journal. The purpose of this review committee is to provide review of articles, from pre-trial to final ruling time to provide expert opinions, to prevent many high-quality articles, because the editor-in-chief and editor are not familiar with the relevant research field, do not pre-review, and finally make a wrong decision. In fact, there are many excellent articles that are rejected because of the editor's unprofessional and unfamiliar. At the same time, in order to avoid another situation, the article itself has no new scientific and technological breakthroughs, and it makes people feel that this work is very important and has major breakthroughs through wording mistakes. Our review committee will also prevent this from happening. In addition, we review the feedback quickly, the author does not need to wait for a long time, even if the rejection, you can quickly submit the article to other journals. So, I think the review committee is the biggest difference between Materials Research Letters and other journals, and one of the keys to our success.
Q4: Thank you to the two teachers for their wonderful sharing. Next, move on to the next question. As the editor-in-chief of a high-quality international journal, I would like to ask Professor Jia to share with scholars: What is the most important factor in wanting to produce high-quality academic papers for publication?
Professor Jia Quanxi: In fact, Professor Zhu also talked about the requirements of some journals, and there are the following points about the factors for producing high-quality academic papers:
First, it's best to speak with data. If the article can't grasp the point and can't convince the review expert or editor, it won't work. Reviewing is a very important step and has a very direct relationship with your writing. For example, in the process of writing, how to use data for quantitative and qualitative analysis. If there is quantitative analysis, there is data, then the article is very convincing; if the analysis is qualitative, there is no data, it is difficult to convince the reviewer.
Second, standards are important. For example, if a certain property of a material increases by one hundred percent, where is this starting point? What kind of data has increased by 100%? Is it and the best results than? Compared to other people's results? Or compared to your own results?
Third, charts need to be interpreted. Some of the article diagrams are very well done, which of course adds weight to the article. But if there is no explanation for this diagram, it is impossible to grasp the main points, and it is impossible to clearly express your own views, it is difficult to pass the review.
Fourth, workplace technical English writing. When there are many typos in the article and the lack of logical correlation between paragraphs, the article is difficult to read, even if there is some very valuable content in the article, but the reviewer can not grasp the focus of the article, and eventually lead to rejection. Technical workplace English writing is not to be ignored.
Q5: For your next question, please share the current status and future of Materials Research Letters, especially in China and globally, and your vision for its future development.
First, make the impact factor above 10. As we all know, especially in China, when authors publish articles, the first thing to look at is the impact factor of the journal, so we are also making efforts in this regard, hoping to increase the impact factor to 10 in a few years, and continue to increase in the future.
Second, maintain top academic status and academic reputation. The impact factor is not the only criterion for judging the quality of an article, nor is it the only criterion for determining whether you have a reputation in academia in the future. Because of different fields, the citations of the article are not the same. We are not raising the impact factor for the sake of the impact factor, we are raising the impact factor by improving the quality of the article, increasing its academic status. We can't tolerate that the MRL impact factor is very high, and the domestic submission volume is very good, but internationally everyone thinks that the quality of the journal's articles is not good, and it is not good for the authors.
Q6: What are the focus of the journal Materials Research Letters, or what areas of research we would like to focus on, for the foreseeable future? In this way, our scholars can be more targeted. In addition, regarding the number of articles published, what are the plans and plans of this journal?
Professor Jia Quanxi: Now with the development of materials discipline, many new experimental technologies have emerged, whether it is structural materials or functional materials, or energy materials, every day you will see new breakthroughs, so we believe that the number of articles published in this journal will slowly increase. Of course, this also requires our editorial board, publishing houses, and our vast number of authors and reviewers to work together as a team to make this magazine more prosperous.
Editor-in-Chief's Message:
Jia Quanxi: No matter how busy you are at work, I hope that everyone must take more care of their health. At the same time, I wish you all major research breakthroughs in your field. Of course, I hope you will continue to support the journal Materials Research Letters.
Zhu Yuntian: I wish you all good health and academic progress in 2022.
The two editors-in-chief introduced us to Materials Research Letters in an all-round way, the editor-in-chief is committed to the development of materials science, a professional review committee, a rigorous review process and Taylor & Francis' century-old academic publishing management experience, I believe that Materials Research Letters will be better and better, and it is an important stage for Chinese materials science researchers to show excellent scientific research achievements to the world.