Team Matter looks forward to 2024

As we head into the new year, like many companies and institutes, we evaluate our past performance and project into the next twelve months. Personally, I started at Cell Press in 2018, and if this was an academic position, it would be the year I would potentially be up for tenure. Better get those letters in order! But an academic journal is not academia, and there is no tenure process. At the same time, heading into our fifth full year of publishing, we can’t really consider ourselves a “new journal.” We have a full impact factor, a relatively healthy volume of submissions, and recognition in the materials science community. We are no longer eligible for those “Young Investigator” awards. We are extremely pleased with our growth to this point, which is reflective of both our editorial efforts and the support of the community. There is, however, always room for improvement. More than improvement, we look at it as opportunity. In addition to shedding that “new journal” moniker, 2024 is a little bit of a transition year for Matter. I am all that remains of the founding editorial team. We have new hires and some members poached from other Cell Press journals (don’t worry… it’s reciprocal). As such, we wanted to take the opportunity to introduce ourselves (or re-introduce ourselves in some cases) and share some of our plans for the upcoming year. Sandra joined the Matter team as an Associate Scientific Editor in February 2023. Based in Cambridge, USA, she is the only person on the team that get to meet with the Editor-in-Chief on a regular basis (for better or for worse). In the years before joining, she immersed herself in the field of materials science from the angles of both chemistry and physics. She has worked on topics such as point defect chemistry, solar cells, ferroelectricity, magnetic metamaterials, and phase transitions using both computational and experimental techniques. Her favorite topic has always been phase transitions and the property changes that occur during them. Sandra is therefore always excited whenever she gets a manuscript that digs deep into mechanisms and couldn’t care less about “buzzwords.” She also truly believes that a picture says more than a thousand words and appreciates well-made figures. For Matter’s 5th anniversary, Sandra looks forward to meeting people in both North America and Europe. In particular, she hopes to engage more with the condensed matter community and organize special issues on that topic. Working behind the scenes of Matter’s account on X (previously Twitter), she also hopes to engage with the community through some fun posts. Sandra is looking forward to attending the APS March meeting in Minneapolis, USA and the European Conference on Applications of Polar Dielectrics in Trondheim, Norway. While the first will be a great opportunity to connect with many different people across all fields, the second will be a chance to engage with a community she already knows well and to visit her hometown. Connor Wells joined the Matter team at Cell Press in September 2023 as an Associate Scientific Editor, following the completion of his PhD in Materials Chemistry. Based in the UK, Connor is currently the only European representative of Matter, which is great news for him with the opportunity to travel! Being fresh out of academia and straight into editorial work, Connor is thoroughly enjoying his new role and is excited to meet researchers and colleagues across Europe. Connor’s research background focused on various materials for their use in biomedical applications, including drug delivery systems and nanostructured MRI contrast agents. As such, he is enthusiastic about promising novel materials that can be used in a range of applications, especially if they are multi-functional. Combining different materials to achieve numerous goals is of great interest to Connor. Nanomaterials in particular are a topic that stokes Connor’s curiosity, as there are so many things to consider: size, shape, surface chemistry, material, functionality, inter alia. As 2024 will see the celebration of the 5th anniversary of Matter, Connor looks forward to networking throughout Europe, engaging in discussions and collaborations with as broad a range of scientists as he can! Promoting the exciting materials science that Matter has on offer, Connor gets to enjoy conferences, lab visits, and social media engagement with his job. Connor is looking forward to attending the E-MRS Spring Meeting in Strasbourg, France in May 2024. Having carried out a research placement in Strasbourg during his undergrad, Connor is very excited to return to the beautiful French city and even more excited to hear about the incredible science that has been ongoing! Connor is hoping to see as much of mainland Europe as he can with his position to reach as many researchers as is possible (travel budget depending). So please do get in touch with him if you have any queries, questions, or just fancy a chat about publishing in Matter! Tina Zhang joined Cell Press in April 2019 and worked as a Scientific Editor for the interdisciplinary journal iScience for three and half years, handling manuscripts and projects in the materials science area. With her deep knowledge of the materials science field and years of editorial experience, in August 2022, Tina started her full-time editorial position on the Matter team. Tina is fascinated by various types of materials (macro to nano, soft and rigid, practically useful and those that “only look good on paper”). It’s hard to tell which specific material is most attractive to her, but when reading papers, she is always intrigued by the ones with fundamental breakthroughs. It could be a new material, a new mechanism, a new application, or just an interesting phenomenon. Looking forward to 2024, Matter is going to celebrate its 5th anniversary, which means a short but fruitful past and a challenging future. As the only full-time editor in China, Tina will continue representing Matter to engage with Chinese researchers on conferences, lab visits, webinars, social media, and so on. Speaking of conferences, Tina is likely to join the annual Chinese Materials Conference in the summer again, as well as other topical conferences on energy materials, biomaterials, etc. In addition to those, Tina will continue organizing small events and forums together with her colleagues. The most exciting idea is to run five Matter Forums globally, celebrating the 5-year birthday of Matter! In the past few years, Tina has traveled to many cities in China’s mainland, meeting researchers working on different types of materials, introducing journal and editorial processes, and discussing manuscripts that potentially fit into Matter. In 2024, she plans to do a series of lab visits in the northeast area of China, where she has never been before, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, where she’s visited almost every year before. If budget allows, Tina is hoping to travel to Europe, meeting researchers and colleagues who have exchanged lots of emails with her but haven’t gotten a chance to meet her yet. Yan joined Cell Press in 2019 and is based in the Beijing office. In the beginning, he was busy with the launching of Cell Reports Physical Science (CRPS). This premium open-access journal publishes cutting-edge and impactful work across the physical sciences. In 2021, besides handling manuscripts for CRPS, he began to spend 50% of his time working as a scientific editor for Matter. Yan was our primary consultant when discussing manuscript transfers between Matter and CRPS, so it made sense to have him participate formally with Matter’s editorial decisions. As one of the only “split editors” at Cell Press, we believe this work model across journals can provide better service to authors, facilitating the transfer of manuscripts and allowing for faster and more consistent decisions at each step. When reading submissions to Matter, Yan is fascinated by various novel materials in all sizes and shapes that have the potential to revolutionize industries in healthcare, sustainable energy, and more. Yan is also interested to see how the combination of high-throughput experimentation, AI, and data science has accelerated the discovery of new materials and the translation of materials from the lab to useful applications. Accordingly, Yan and his colleagues have assembled a series of topic collections in the past few years, highlighting some of the most highly cited and influential papers from Matter and CRPS. Please take a look at the journal webpage if you have time—there is some great work there. Next year will see the 5th anniversary of Matter, and we will organize several events on conferences, webinars, and social media to celebrate this anniversary. Representing both Matter and CRPS, Yan plans to arrange some forums and lab visits, particularly in the western area of China and in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Yan looks forward to meeting our authors, reviewers, and advisory board members during these activities, and we also hope this is a good chance for you to know the journal better and interact with us. If you have any ideas for, or interest in, working with us on a joint forum, or anything else that you think we can do together, then please do not hesitate to let us know. Yuqing Lin joined Cell Press in 2022. He primarily works at the iconic interdisciplinary journal iScience while also being an ecosystem editor at Matter to facilitate cohesive journal growth and better author service. The ecosystem endeavor covers a wide spectrum of activities, ranging from smooth paper transfers to cross-journal article collections in strategic areas and Cell-Press-wide seminars that engage the community from both online and offline. While formally associated with iScience, Yuqing is fully empowered to recruit, commission, handle, and make all decisions regarding Matter submissions. Yuqing’s research interests expand from laser optics to the bio-applications of nanodevices and then to intelligent systems that integrate the prowess of novel materials as he progresses in his academic career. As an editor, Yuqing embarks upon a wide-eyed journey each time he reads a paper, and he sincerely enjoys being a companion for researchers, riding along the ups and downs in this passionate road to explore the unknown. Of all the exciting works he reads at Matter, Yuqing resonates the most with research in materials that exhibit or are inspired by exotic new physics. 2024 marks the 5th anniversary of Matter. For this special year, Yuqing plans to visit the institutions in the Yangtze Delta and the central part of China, as well as the ones in Beijing, where he is based. Yuqing looks forward to attending the CPS fall meeting and Photonics Asia in China, as well as engaging the speakers from the JPS Spring meeting in Japan and the OSA meeting in Korea. The first physical science Cell Press LabLink in China will be held in 2024, as part of the celebration of the 5th anniversary of Matter. Focusing on the topic of medical robotics, this seminar covers the broad interest in materials research, robotic system integration, and biomedical applications of this fast-developing field. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you are interested in participating in any capacity! Along with some of the above-mentioned conferences and activities, Team Matter will surely make appearances at ACS in the spring and “fall,” as well as MRS in the spring and fall. Personally, I am hoping to make trips to Japan and China this year to promote Matter, but (at the time of writing this Editorial) we are waiting our travel budgets to confirm and finalize our travel plans. In addition to travel, we look forward to some special issues, including our first “double content” issue in March, our curated anniversary issue (scheduled for July), our 4th annual “Researcher’s Choice” Preview-only issue (scheduled for August), and our 4th annual “Pieces of Matter” focus issue (scheduled for December). Of course, we have more focus collections and surprises in the works with our sister journals, including Chem, Joule, Device, One Earth, Chem Catalysis, Cell Reports Physical Science, Cell Reports Sustainability, iScience… and perhaps more titles to be announced! It’s going to be a jam-packed year. Come say hello.