Athena Kicks Off Journals Portfolio With First Journal in Materials Science

Athena International Publishing announced the first journal in its new publishing portfolio today in the area of Materials Science. The journal entitled “Materials Highlights” will publish original research reports, review papers, commentaries and communications in the broadly defined fields of materials science and engineering. It is expected that the journal will be open for submissions from the end of January 2022.

Materials Highlights is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal that publishes articles on the latest highlights in materials science and engineering. The emphasis of the journal is on new ideas for preparing functional materials and on the relationship between material properties (composition/structure/shape) and functions (biomedical, energy & environmental applications) at all length scales. The scope of the journal covers the design, preparation, characterization and application of all kinds of functional materials. Topics covered include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Hypothesis-driven design of functional materials.
• Materials whose functionality arises from their ingredients, such as inorganics, organics, alloys, quantum dots, polymers, biomacromolecules, graphene, nanotubes, pharmaceuticals, catalysts and their composite or hybrid materials.
• Materials where the functional performance results from their internal structures, such as homogeneous, heterogeneous, core-shell, Janus, hierarchical, multiple-compartment and other complex structures.
• Materials whose function results from their external shapes, such as linear fibers, round particles, donuts, ribbons, dumbbells, shuttles, tadpoles, and other special shapes.
• Materials surface science and engineering linking structure to functional performance.
• New strategies for materials preparation and characterization.
• Functional applications, with an emphasis on the biomedical, energy and environmental fields.

Materials Highlights was launched in 2019 and has published two volumes in 2020 and 2021 with its previous publisher Atlantis Press (now acquired by Springer Nature). The journal will transfer to Athena International Publishing from 2022 with a revised editorial strategy aimed at attracting more submissions and preparing for indexation in key databases. The Editors-in-Chief of the journal, Gareth Williams (University College London) and Deng-Guang Yu (University of Shanghai for Science and Technology) will continue in their roles after the transfer with the intention to significantly expand the Editorial Board throughout the course of 2022. Materials Highlights is expected to be open for new submissions at the end of January 2022.

Athena International Publishing is an open access publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information which was founded at the end of 2021 to further support the efficient dissemination of “sound science” and the advancement and exchange of scientific knowledge. The company headquarters is based in Amsterdam in The Netherlands and our team consists of a group of publishing professionals with more than 150 years of combined experience across all major STM publishers and service providers in the industry. The Athena publishing portfolio consists of journals, book series, conference proceedings and books covering all STM disciplines including Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Biology and Life Sciences, Health and Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. All our publications are Open Access and hence free to read, download, copy and distribute under the terms of the applicable Creative Commons end-user license. For more information, please visit https://www.athena-publishing.com.