Journal of Electroceramics

Edited by:
  • Harry L. Tuller
>Kluwer. 4/yr. $255, DFl510 (institutional); $105, DFl198 (personal)

A number of established broad-spectrum ceramics journals already exist — such as Journal of the American Ceramic Society and Journal of the European Ceramic Society — as well as some broader-spectrum materials journals such as Journal of Materials Science. They all include papers concerned with such materials as ferroelectrics, magnetic ferrites, solid electrolytes, piezoelectrics and semiconducting and superconducting oxides. According to the editor's preface in the first issue of the new journal, this group of ceramics is collectively termed ‘electroceramics’; he judges that the literature related to these materials is too widely scattered, so that the various research communities involved remain unaware of much of it. This is the declared motive for inaugurating Journal of Electroceramics.

The journal shows every sign of covering the full range of electroceramics. Indeed, it goes a little beyond: one issue is devoted to sensors, and includes a paper on giant magnetoresistance, a property of metallic multilayers. Another special issue is most interestingly devoted to “nanostructured materials for energy applications”, and includes a paper on nanostructured catalysts — again, an extension of the electroceramics concept. I point out these innovations in admiration, not criticism. ‘Mainline’ papers include several on processing innovations, non-stoichiometry and associated defects, impedance spectrometry, ionic conductors and ceramic superconductors.

A point of concern is the institutional subscription price. It is usual for publishers to tempt little fishes in with gently smiling jaws, and for their crocodilian propensities to be manifested only later. Kluwer, it seems, is revealing itself as a crocodile from the word go. Nevertheless, the new journal warrants a place in those technical libraries that can afford it and whose readers include a posse of electroceramicists.