Polymeric Materials, Preferably Spun

Abstract

The year 2013 was another great step forward for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering (MME)! The ISI Impact Factor continues to grow, and in summer we were happy to celebrate not only a new all-time high in the journal's history, but also the fact that for the first time we crossed the 2.0 borderline. The exact value is now 2.338, a 20% increase versus the previous Impact Factor of the journal. The global trend of “traditional” polymer science research opening up to neighboring scientific areas is also reflected in the work submitted to MME. Although the main focus of MME remains the publication of high-quality research on the design, modification, characterization, and processing of advanced polymeric materials, a certain shift in topics is undeniable. As shown in Table 1, some of the most downloaded publications from 2012/2013 include work on carbon fibers, on nanofibers for nanophotonics and optoelectronics, or on graphene-polymer composites. Another strong trend is the application of electrospinning methods (e.g., for industrial upscaling) and numerous results on electrospun fibers and materials. The latter field was additionally featured in the MME special issue dedicated to advances in electrospun functional nanofibers. This issue, published in spring 2013, was guest-edited by Il-Doo Kim and includes several of the publications that have been of highest recent interest to our readership. All special issues, invited Reviews and Feature Articles, as well as unsolicited contributions with the editorial VIP label, are additionally promoted on the journal homepage (http://mme-journal.de) and on our news portal MaterialsViews (http://materialsviews.com). The dedicated team of in-house editors aims to offer the best possible services to our authors, referees, and readers, and now boasts the additional benefit of a new online submission and refereeing system introduced in spring 2013. Nonetheless, the number of submitted papers by far exceeds what can possibly be published or even sent to referees. Therefore, rejection rates for MME need to remain high with values above 75%, which reflects the strict selection criteria already applied during editorial pre-screening, as well as the final editorial decision on papers that have qualified for external peer-reviewing. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank those people who are indispensable for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering: our authors for sending their exciting new research results and their interest in the journal, our referees for helping us to identify and further improve the best contributions, and the members of the advisory boards for their encouraging support and advice. Stefan Spiegel Editor