Macromolecular Theory and Simulations in 2013: Fully Online and Strong as Ever

Abstract

Dear Readers, I am delighted to report that 2012 has been another good year for Macromolecular Theory and Simulations (MTS). In the summer we were happy to see a quite significant increase of the ISI Impact Factor, up by nearly 20% to the new value of 1.7, thereby confirming the journal's recognition in the polymer science community as the leading publication platform for work in the field of theory and simulations. This encouraging development certainly was corroborated by the application of strict selection criteria. Typical for highly specialized journals, the average quality of papers submitted to MTS is already rather high. Nonetheless, all submissions undergo careful pre-selection and peer reviewing, such that only some 50% of all contributions can be accepted for publication. Some examples of the theoretical, modeling, or simulation work published throughout 2012 that attracted the highest interest with our readership are collected in Table 1. As you can see, these contributions were not only from a wide variety of well-known authors from different areas and institutions, but they also cover a wide range of topics: The ever-important kinetic modeling of radical polymerization is investigated, as well as thermo-responsive or confined polymers, while other authors used mathematical modeling for gel dosimeters or critically examined the reinforcement efficiency of carbon nanotubes, to give only a few examples. Another exciting development has already happened: you will see, when you read this Editorial after having accessed its PDF or HTML version, that our journals are available online and have benefited for a long time from the advantages of an online version and from being accessible—with proper authorization—from practically everywhere. In parallel, over the last years we have noticed a significant decrease in subscriptions to the print version, despite the interest in the content of Macromolecular Theory and Simulations (and its sister journals) continually increasing, as documented by the number of article downloads. To reflect these changes in our readers' behavior and preferences, we have now decided to start moving the Macromolecular Journals to ‘online-only’. Beginning with their 2013 volumes, the titles Macromolecular Theory and Simulations (as well as Macromolecular Bioscience and Macromolecular Reaction Engineering) will no longer be published in print. Of course, this step will not have any consequences for the scientific quality and editorial control or for the strict selection of content based on an independent peer-reviewing process. Furthermore, the article layout and the issue-based publication (and citation) of content will not change. In fact, to the big majority of our readers in the scientific community, the discontinuation of the parallel print copy will not be noticeable at all. Early View publication at the earliest possible moment will continue, as well as the additional featuring of selected contributions with issue Cover Pictures or Frontispieces. As a new benefit for our authors, we are now able to offer free publication of color figures in our online-only titles. In this context, we would like to encourage you again to make use of the Content Alert service of our online platform, Wiley Online Library, which will inform you via email whenever a new article or issue is published. Using this service, you can ensure that you will not miss exciting new results from the theory- and simulations-focused areas of polymer science published in MTS. Furthermore, with the one-time and absolutely free registration you can also subscribe to any of the other ca. 1500 titles published by Wiley/Wiley-VCH on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Of course I cannot close this Editorial without thanking those people indispensable for Macromolecular Theory and Simulations: our authors for their fascinating research and interest in the journal, our referees for helping us to identify the best articles, and the members of the advisory boards for their encouraging support! Stefan Spiegel Editor