Becoming the First Open Access Journal in the <i>Macromolecular</i> Journals Family

After the launch of a new logo and cover design, along with restructuring our editorial responsibilities last year, Macromolecular Materials and Engineering is not resting on its laurels, as we continue to improve, reiterate, and refine our journal strategies for our continued success! In this editorial you will read about Macromolecular Materials and Engineering's transition to Open Access, our new metrics in the Journal Citation Reports, a special issue, changes to the editorial board, and feedback for our reviewers. After careful consideration of all options available for future development, we have taken the decision to convert Macromolecular Materials and Engineering to an open access journal. So, as of this issue, Macromolecular Materials and Engineering is only publishing open access articles. This has a number of advantages for readers and authors. While readers enjoy the convenience of being able to view every open access article without having to worry about library subscriptions, authors also benefit from increased visibility. Our data show that across Wiley journals, publishing open access results in more downloads, more citations, and greater visibility from the general public. Additionally, many funding agencies are beginning to require publicly funded research to be made available to the general public, and open access is an excellent option to meet these needs, increasing transparency and the likelihood of your work to have a strong impact on the progress of our society. You can find more information on the benefits of public access at the end of this editorial. It is my pleasure to let you know that with the recent 2022 impact factor of 4.402, Macromolecular Materials and Engineering has once again reached the highest impact factor in the journal's history! Of course, the impact factor is not the only important metric for a journal, and we are proud to share some more indicators of our journal's growth here: Journal Citation Indicator: 0.76 Immediacy Index: 0.767 Rank by Journal Citation Indicator: Polymer Science 22/95 (Q1) Apart from the other great content, I would like invite you to take a look at our latest special issue on Sustainable Macromolecular Materials and Engineering guest-edited by Biqiong Chen, Suprakas Sinha Ray, and Mohan Edirisinghe. This special issue is part of a series of special issues from the Macromolecular family of journals and highlights our continued support of the polymer community in creating a sustainable future for all of us. Last, but certainly not least, I would also like to inform you that we have replaced our two-tier Editorial Board structure with a single, more journal-focused Advisory Board for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering. Of course, the Macromolecular journals are still a family, and we have established a Wiley Polymer Scientific Committee comprising one representative from each of the Advisory Boards of Wiley's Polymer journals, including not just the Macromolecular titles, but our sister polymer journals as well (e.g., the Journal of Applied Polymer Science). The committee will act as close advisors to the in-house editors and represent their journal and community in the wider context of the Wiley Polymer portfolio. I am excited to share that the representative for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering is Seema Agarwal from the University of Bayreuth! Furthermore, I am truly delighted that the following group of excellent scientists has accepted the invitation to join the Advisory Board of Macromolecular Materials and Engineering: Mahdi Bodaghi (Nottingham Trent University), Robert Chang (Stevens Institute of Technology), Minna Hakkarainen (KTH Royal Institute of Technology), Sandra Schlögl (Polymer Competence Center Leoben), Lan Xie (Guizhou University), Ju Xu (University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences), Chuhong Zhang (Sichuan University), and João Soares (University of Alberta) who joins us from the former Executive Advisory Board. To enhance transparency of our editorial decision-making process, we introduced a workflow where reviewers of manuscripts at our journals are notified of the editorial decision for manuscripts they have reviewed immediately after the decision is made. The other, anonymized, reviewer reports are also shared with them. This gives our reviewers valuable insight into their peers’ evaluation of the manuscript and additional guidance as to the journal's standards. The feedback we have received from our reviewers indicates they are appreciative not just of the information provided in the notification but also how it acknowledges the important contribution they make to upholding our stringent requirements. I would like to encourage you to submit your best papers to Macromolecular Materials and Engineering and take advantage of having your article published as open access. We hope that you share our excitement for these new developments at Macromolecular Materials and Engineering. We are extremely excited for the future and look forward to publishing the best research in polymer science in 2023 and beyond! Sincerely yours, Dr. David Huesmann Editor-in-Chief P.S.: More information on the transition to open access Our editorial team is fully supportive of this exciting change for the journal which reflects the growing movement toward openly accessible published research. We believe authors in this subject area are ready to embrace open access publishing and this will help the journal to continue to attract the very best papers in the field. For authors, publishing open access creates more permissive use and sharing of your articles, which helps to increase the dissemination of their research, due to more flexible Creative Commons licenses. We know from our own experience of converting journals to open access that this can result in a significant increase in readership and citations of the journal's articles. We are looking forward to the great advantage that everyone will be able to read the journal irrespective of specialty, host institution, or location. We also continue to see many institutions and global funders creating open access policies and mandates for their authors. As such, we would like to ensure that we are making it easier for authors to fulfil their funders’ mandates on open access publication. Many universities have also entered into Transformational Agreements that automatically cover article processing charges. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering will join over 200 other high-impact journals that have transitioned to the Wiley Open Access portfolio and will benefit from a number of advantages that this confers. We want to stress that all Wiley Open Access titles are editorially independent, and this will be the case for Macromolecular Materials and Engineering, too. We will continue to apply the same rigorous standards of peer review and acceptance criteria we always have done, ensuring that the journal remains the high quality publication we have all come to value enormously. Our editorial team, with your support, will continue to drive all editorial policies for the journal.

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