This journal has been discontinued at the end of 2023 and is no longer open for submissions. An APC price is therefore not applicable.

The copyright of all articles which are published in Materials Highlights remains with the Authors, i.e. Authors retain full ownership of their published work. Upon acceptance of an article, Authors are requested to sign a Journal Publishing Agreement in which they grant Athena International Publishing an exclusive publication license. Under this license, Authors grant the following rights to the publisher:

• The exclusive right to publish and distribute the article, and to grant this right to others, including for commercial purposes.
• The right to publish and circulate the article as Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
• The right to make the article available in all forms and media so that it can be used with the latest technology even after publication.
• The authority to enforce the rights in the article, on behalf of the Authors, against third parties, for example, in the case of plagiarism or copyright infringement.

For more information on post-acceptance rights, please refer to the section on Copyright in our Copyright & User Licenses policy.

All articles published in Materials Highlights are Open Access, meaning that they are immediately and permanently accessible for free on the Athena International Publishing platform. A Creative Commons (CC) user license subsequently defines how end users can reuse those articles after publication.

Articles in Materials Highlights are published under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license, meaning that end users can freely share an article (i.e. copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt it (i.e. remix, transform and build upon the material), on the condition that proper attribution is given (i.e. appropriate credit, a link to the license and an indication if any changes were made; all in such a way that does not suggest that the licensor endorses the user or the use) and the material is only used for non-commercial purposes.

Note that Authors must accept this CC license when signing the Journal Publishing Agreement upon acceptance of their manuscript. However, in exceptional cases other user licenses can be applied to individual articles to comply with government regulations or funding mandates. Authors which are required by mandate to deviate from the standard user license are requested to contact Athena International Publishing by sending an email to rights@athena-publishing.com immediately on acceptance of their article. Note that once applied to a published article a Creative Commons user license is non-revocable and cannot be changed anymore.

For more information on the terms associated with applicable user licenses, please refer to the section on End-User Licenses in our Copyright & User Licenses policy.