EDITORIAL
This 42th issue of Materials Research contains 13 original articles and one extensive review article. Mat Res. is also published in electronic format at Scielo www.scielo.br/mr). The rejected /accepted ratio still fluctuates at around 40-50%. About a hundred articles are under review at present.
CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - www.capes.gov.br recently ranked well-known scientific periodicals in seven different levels, which vary from A1 (best), A2, B1, B2, B3, B4 to B5 (worst). From our particular standpoint, important news is that Materials Research has been qualified as a B1 journal, and this is probably a fair position for Mat. Res., a 10-year old periodical that has only recently been included in the ISI database!
On the other hand, this editor (who has been serving for many years in the editorial boards of seven other scientific journals) disagrees with the ranking given to various periodicals. For instance, some archival A1 periodicals such as Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, Macromolecules, Acta Materialia, Biomaterials and Advanced Functional Materials (to name a few) are much more selective than several others listed in that same category (I will not list those here for obvious reasons). Not to mention that Nature Materials is not even in the list! As regards to the particular research field that I know best (vitreous materials), Elsevier's JNCS - Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids - was placed in a significantly lower position than journals that are not as rigorous or relevant, with impact factor <1 and much shorter cited half-life! The JNCS started about 50 years ago, has an impact factor of about 1.4 (mostly because their process of analysis with 2 or 3 referees is slow) and cited half-life of over 10 years (one of the longest among all the materials journals), and is, undoubtedly, one of the three most important periodicals to all those working on vitreous materials. Another very important periodical in this research field- Physics and Chemistry of Glasses - which started in 1917, and has a similar impact factor as the JNCS, was ranked as a B3 periodical! I could list here many other inconsistencies and have heard similar criticism from several colleagues. The main complaint here is that such distortions could significantly impact the evaluation of our post-graduate programs. For that reason, it would only be fair that the board of editors of Mat. Res. should be consulted in any future classification of materials related journals! And my particular suggestion is that such a list should be amended and validated by the "materials community" before publication.
At present Materials Research is indexed by the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE), which includes the Web of Science, ISI Alerting Service and Materials Science Citation Index (MSCI), Scopus, Chemical Abstracts, World Ceramic Abstracts and Int. Pool of Glass Abstracts.
We gratefully acknowledge the Brazilian funding agency CNPq for covering the editorial and printing costs of this issue of Mat. Res. The financial support from the Department of Materials Engineering, Federal University of São Carlos (DEMa/UFSCar) for mailing expenses; the Vitreous Materials Laboratory (LaMaV/UFSCar) for fax and telephone expenses are also acknowledged. Associação Brasileira de Metalurgia e Materiais (ABM) and Associação Brasileira de Polímeros (ABPol) cover the editorial assistant's salary. Associação Brasileira de Cerâmica - ABC, ABPol, and ABM have also helped advertising Materials Research and managing its subscriptions and financial resources.
Edgar Dutra Zanotto
Editor-in-chief
March 30, 2009
Materials Research - Ibero-american Journal of Materials
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
18 May 2009 -
Date of issue
Mar 2009
