Happy Times for the Macromolecular Journals.

Abstract

Let's start the new year with some good news that we know a lot of you have been waiting for: from January 2018, there will no longer be color charges for any of the Macromolecular journals. We are looking forward to your colorful submissions! Speaking of submissions, we have seen a strong overall growth of 20% across all Macromolecular journals over the last two years. This trend supports our moves to put more man-power into the Macromolecular titles, and so, to further strengthen our polymer program, David Huesmann and Anne Pfisterer have been promoted to deputy editors for the whole Macromolecular family. You already know Anne as the editor responsible for Macromolecular Bioscience, and David from his work on Macromolecular Materials and Engineering. They will now play a bigger role in the whole Macromolecular family, supporting Mara Staffilani with Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics and further developing the family flagship Macromolecular Rapid Communications. In addition, we can count on the help of Bo Weng from our Beijing office and Christine Mayer with her expertise in bio-related topics and, of course, Stefan Spiegel remains in charge of our specialized titles Macromolecular Reaction Engineering and Macromolecular Theory and Simulations. Unfortunately, Szymon Wiktorowicz' responsibilities have shifted with the success of his other projects, resulting in his move away from peer-review to take a lead role in Advanced Science News and the development of video content (see his video abstracts, conference coverage and interviews). Although he will be missed a lot, we are sure he will continue to support the team wherever possible in his new role. Last year we received a lot of fascinating research results in form of communications, full papers as well as in-depth overview articles to Macromolecular Bioscience. Our first issue in 2017 was a special issue dedicated to Professor Kazunori Kataoka, a pioneer of polymer-based drug delivery, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. His inspiring work on polymeric micelles, i.e., self-assembled nanostructures with a drug-loaded core and a protective hydrophilic shell, has largely impacted on biomaterials and nanomedicine. Colleagues and friends contributed to this issue guest-edited by Horacio Cabral, Kanjiro Miyata and Kensuke Osada (all from Tokyo University) which included four reviews as well as three feature articles along with several original research papers. The articles of this issue received a tremendous amount of attention from our readership. Among the top five downloaded articles from 2017 are three contributions from this outstanding issue (Table 1). The inherent strength of polymers is tunability of their synthesis to provide tailor-made materials for the intended application. However, it also represents the biggest challenge to tailor polymer materials to a specific biomedical or therapeutic need and to advance from fundamental materials research into clinical translation. A themed special issue guest-edited by Tanja Weil (Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz) and Matthias Barz (Mainz University) featured research on emerging applications of polymers for the synthesis of functional biomaterials. Most articles in this issue describe the optimization of polymers for biomedical applications particularly focusing on their in vitro and finally also their in vivo evaluation in relevant disease models. The broad scope and interdisciplinary research published in Macromolecular Bioscience is very well reflected in Table 2, where contributions from 2015 and 2016 are listed which were among the most cited papers in 2017. These articles on ROS responsive polymers for biomedical applications (Chaoliang He, Xuesi Chen et al.), polyphosphate as an implant material (Werner Müller, Xiaohong Wang et al.), cationic polymers as antimicrobial polymers (Jörg C. Tiller et al.), thermoresponsive self-assembly of nanostructures (Patrick Theato, Kristi L. Kiick et al.) as well as polymeric materials for gene delivery (Dongsheng He and Ernst Wagner) were especially well received by our readership and will significantly contribute to the next impact factor of Macromolecular Bioscience. We would like to welcome three new board members: Matthias Barz (Mainz University), Horacio Cabral (Tokyo University) and Robert Luxenhofer (Würzburg University) have agreed to join the editorial advisory board of Macromolecular Bioscience. We look forward to a close and fruitful cooperation! Last but not least, we would like to take the opportunity to thank our board members, reviewers and authors for their active support and advice. We are most grateful to authors for sending us their best results; to our reviewers and board members for helping us to maintain our high standards and to you as our readers for your interest and support.