Current Opinions in Solid State and Materials Science

Edited by:
  • Anthony K. Cheetham,
  • Hiroo Inokuchi &
  • John Meurig Thomas
Current Science. 6/yr.$612.50, £370.50 (institutional); $212.50, £130.50 (personal); $98.50, £63.50 (student)
Credit: MARK DOBSON

One of the principal challenges facing modern scientists is the assimilation and digestion of an enormous volume of literature from diverse sources. This is especially true in the important area of materials research, where major problems — such as energy storage and conversion, high-strength materials, and optical and electronic materials — are highly interdisciplinary, with academic tentacles in chemistry, physics and engineering. Keeping up to date with all the relevant literature is a tall order.

Current Opinion in Solid State and Materials Science endeavours to review selected areas within the scope of materials science on a regular basis.

The editors have divided materials science into 13 subject areas: electronic materials; solid catalysts and porous solids; optical and magnetic materials; synthesis and reactivity of solids; metals and alloys; biomaterials; amorphous materials; molecular crystals; characterization techniques; surface science; polymers; modelling and simulation of solids; and ceramics, composites and intergrowths.

Each issue of the journal addresses two or three of these subject areas in the form of a series of six to ten short reviews stressing the author's view of important trends, tied together by overviews written by the section editors.

The journal's title gives long-deserved recognition to the fact that opinions (especially about what is important) are a much more integral part of science than most scientists would like to admit. The journal encourages discussion along such lines, including the unique feature of marking references that are of special or outstanding interest.

The first issues have been of extremely high quality and of broad interest. I expect the articles will be of most use for either getting started on a new project or learning about areas outside one's field of expertise. There are not many journals that publish this type of article. The MRS Bulletin comes perhaps the closest, devoting about half of each issue to an ad hoc topic and the other half to news of the Materials Research Society.

A large obstacle to the success of this new Current Opinion journal is that it lacks the society base of the MRS Bulletin. This makes it more expensive (but not unreasonable in comparison with other unaffiliated journals) and not an automatic addition to personal or library collections. But if the quality of its first two years can be retained, materials scientists will surely want access to this journal.