Looking Ahead

Abstract

On behalf of the Particle & Particle System Characterizations editorial team, I wish our readers a Happy New Year. It has been my greatest pleasure to lead the journal as the Editor-in-Chief since early 2018, with the invaluable support of the editors, and my colleagues, Floriano Cuccureddu (Berlin, Germany), Duoduo Liang (Beijing, China), and Ulf Scheffler (Weinheim, Germany). Over the past months, I have had the honor to read first-hand cutting-edge research on nanostructured materials for applications spanning biomedicine, energy, technology, and environmental protection. Table 1 provides a list of some of the most-read articles published in the journal in 2018. They give us a feeling for the journal topics that attracted the readers most. We are thankful to all our authors for entrusting their work to us. In 2018, Particle & Particle System Characterizations published two topical issues. Artificial Photosynthesis – Mimicking Nature for Renewable Energy Production (2018/01) highlighted important concepts in artificial photosynthesis for versatile energy- and environment-related applications. The issue was guest-edited by Wee-Jun Ong, Zhiqun Lin, and Kazunari Domen. Sara Skrabalak, Jingyi Chen, Svetlana Neretina, and Dong Qin assembled the issue Bimetallic Nanomaterials Bring New Properties and Functions (2018/05), showcasing recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, and properties of bimetallic nanoparticles. Both topical issues received a strong resonance from the scientific community, with many papers featuring among the most-read (Table 1) and most-cited (Web of Science) articles published in the journal over the past year. Progress in the field of nanoparticles and nanostructures is rapid, and they have been demonstrated to exhibit unique chiroptical properties. In the coming year, a new special issue guest-edited by Shaowei Chen, Zhiyong Tang, and Jianping Xie, will be dedicated to this research area. The time scientists dedicate to review the work of their peers is fundamental to the reviewing process and is invaluable to help us publish high quality science. We are therefore thankful to all our referees. In particular, I would like to thank the referees who have been most active in the past two years with the journal (Table 2). Particle & Particle System Characterizations is in continuous development. In response to the interests of the scientific community and new scientific trends, the journal's Advisory Board was renewed in early 2018. We are grateful to the board members who helped us in the past and are pleased to receive the support of Sara Bals (Univ. of Antwerp, Belgium), Shaowei Chen (Univ. of California, USA), Mircea Cotlet (Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA), Hong Jin Fan (Nanyang Technological Univ., Singapore), Steve Granick (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Korea), Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli (Univ. of Massachusetts Boston, USA), Seong-Ju Hwang (Ewha Womans Univ. Seoul, Korea), Rafal Klajn (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel), Xing Yi Ling (Nanyang Technological Univ., Singapore), Juewen Liu (Univ. of Waterloo, Canada), Zhuang Liu (Soochow Univ., China), Jwa-Min Nam (Seoul National Univ., Korea), Thomas Nann (Victoria Univ. of Wellington, New Zealand), Julia Pérez-Prieto (Univ. of Valencia, Spain), Paresh C. Ray (Jackson State Univ., USA), Sara Skrabalak (Indiana Univ., USA), Tatsuya Tsukuda (Univ. of Tokyo, Japan), Jianfang Wang, (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong, China), Claire Wilhelm (Paris Diterot Univ., France), Gi-Ra Yi (Sungkyunkwan Univ., Korea), Yan Yu (University of Science and Technology of China, China), Fan Zhang (Fudan Univ., China), Dejian Zhou (Univ. of Leeds, UK). We have already had the pleasure of collaborating with a few of the new board members, and we look forward to working with them all in the future. We all know, finding time to stay up-to-date with recent research literature is not easy. Starting in January 2019, Particle & Particle Systems Characterization offers a virtual issue: Best of Particle. This issue is a collection of some of the most interesting articles published in the journal. The articles are selected by the journal editors and are free to access for a limited time. We hope Best of Particle will be helpful to our readers to identify relevant recent papers in their research area. Best of Particle will be updated on a regular basis – so stay in touch and check for new content!