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Global partnership signed to expand opportunities for open access publishing in materials science

31 Jan 2014 by iopp

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS, Japan) are delighted to announce a new collaboration with the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa, Switzerland) to expand the open access journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials (STAM).

NIMS and Empa have signed a new 5-year collaborative agreement for the editorial management of the journal. As a result of this NIMS and Empa will join forces to further strengthen the position and visibility of STAM in Europe and the US, extending the existing publishing partnership with IOP Publishing.

Professor Gian Luca Bona, the CEO of Empa, has agreed to act as a STAM Regional Editor, and Professor Harald Krug, a member of Empa’s Board of Directors, will become the new Co-Editor-in-Chief. Empa will also set up a STAM editorial office in Switzerland, which will act as the journal’s editorial hub in Europe.

Says Professor Gian Luca Bona, “It is our intention to attract high-impact contributions from Europe and the US to STAM and thus make the journal one of the world’s leading publications in materials science. What’s more, we plan to extend the scope of the journal to cover new technology areas such as the use of novel materials for medical applications; this, we think, will greatly enhance the visibility and the overall appeal of STAM.”

Professor Ushioda, president of NIMS, adds that “the collaboration with Empa is a big step towards continuing to develop a widely trusted journal with a global reach. The expansion in scope will allow STAM to respond to areas of research focus and new fields being explored by European and American researchers, whilst also continuing to deal with Japanese society’s expectations of the materials science field with regard to national resilience, energy, and environmental issues. Moreover, I firmly believe that Empa’s participation in the open access journal STAM will reinforce its position as a journal with a global audience.”

STAM is already one of the highest ranked gold open access journals in materials science and is celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2014. In 2008, NIMS took over the management of its peer review and financial systems, and IOP Publishing began co-publishing and hosting the journal. This partnership led to a continuous rise of the Impact Factor from 1.267 in 2008 to 3.752 in 2012.

Further information will be available at the STAM homepage at iopscience.org/stam.

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