Editorial

Abstract

Dear Readers, This Editorial opens the 90th volume of steel research international, which is the tenth volume published by Wiley-VCH. The journal is owned by Wiley-VCH since 2018 and is now a full member of our materials science journals family, with sister journals such as Advanced Engineering Materials and Advanced Materials, after publishing the journal on behalf of Verlag Stahleisen for nearly a decade. However, the close relation with the earlier partners will be continued and we are happy to announce that the Steelinstitute VDEh, the Max-Planck-Institute for Iron Research (MPIE), the Austrian Society for Metallurgy and Materials (ASMET), Jernkontoret and the Chinese Society for Metals (CSM) will support the journal also in future. We are also glad to report that the last year has seen some records for steel research international, such as the highest number of submissions ever and an all-time high Impact Factor. The 2018 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports gave a result of now 1.424, which means a 300 % increase over the last ten years. At the same time, submissions have also increased by even more than 300% and come from more than thirty nations all over the world. The ongoing success story of the journal would not be possible without support from its community. Hence we were all shocked and saddened to hear about the premature and unexpected death of Bruno de Cooman, in summer 2018, who was an esteemed author, reviewer, and long-time board member of steel research international. The journal covers today a variety of topics in the field of steel research, from theoretical to experimental research, from optimization of raw materials and processes to investigating and tailoring the microstructure of various steels. To get a glimpse of the content steel research international is offering, please have a look at Table 1 which shows the articles with the highest influence on the next Impact Factor (i.e. articles published in 2016 and 2017) and see the keyword cloud which is shown in Figure 1. We also recommend to regularly check the newest articles in EarlyView as well as the lists of most accessed articles, available on the journal homepage at www.steel-research.de. A selection of some representative covers is shown in Figure 2 – the respective articles deal with topics such as industrial furnaces and microstructures of steel. Two Special Issues and a Special Section were published in 2018: one issue composed of review articles only is presenting an overview of the field of Modeling and Simulation of Steelmaking, guest-edited by Andreas Ludwig. Another Special Issue is devoted to steel research performed at University of Science and Technology Beijing (USTB), guest-edited by Lifeng Zhang, and a Special Section is devoted to High-Manganese Steels, guest-edited by Wolfgang Bleck. The near future will see some new Special Issues and Sections, such as a Special Issue guest-edited by Chenn Zhou on Steel Manufacturing Simulation and Visualization, and a Special Section guest-edited by Rudolf Kawalla presenting highlights from the recent MEFORM 2018 conference. We would like to thank all authors, reviewers, readers, and board members for their ongoing interest in and support of steel research international. Looking forward to a new year in steel research, we wish you all the best for 2019. Sandra Kalveram, Editor-in-Chief Ulf Scheffler, Editor