January 2013 marks the first anniversary of the publication of original research in NPG Asia Materials. During this first year, we published 24 original articles and five invited reviews. The size of the journal may look small, but it is a result of our stringent criteria and rigorous reviewing process. The journal received several times this number of submissions, and the high rejection rate reflects our ambitions for the journal: to be one of the premier materials sciences journals—Asia’s global materials science journal. Here maybe a good opportunity to restate what we are looking for in the submitted papers. We place emphasis on fundamental scientific novelty of the research, either in the sense of novel materials, or in the sense of novel physical or chemical phenomena that result in new properties and lead to advanced functionality and applications of previously known materials. The keyword is novelty—over the past year we rejected many papers that were scientifically sound and of high merit but lacked the crucial element of scientific progress.

Photo from an Editorial meeting hosted by POSTECH, Korea. From left: Tomoyasu Taniyama, Ikuyoshi Tomita, Hideo Takezoe (Founding Editor), Seunghwan Kim (Dean of Research Affairs of POSTECH), Martin Vacha and Hee Cheul Choi.

In the coming year, we plan an important addition to the journal’s content–Research Highlights. Research Highlights will be short articles introducing in an accessible form significant research work published by authors from the Asia-Pacific region in other scientific journals. The articles will be written and authored by active scientists who would be capable of using their expertise to provide an analytical perspective on the published research. They are in many ways a continuance of the successful Research Highlights that were published in the foundation phase of the journal and we are pleased to be able to offer them again as a service to our readers.

In June 2012 NPG Asia Materials received its first impact factor of 5.533. Although this is only one indicator of the work and effort that goes into a journal, we recognize its importance and were pleased to see that the value ranked us in the top 20 of more than 200 materials science journals. We already see its effect in a substantial increase in the number of submission after the release date, and are working to ensure that the journal continues to develop its value to the community.

Finally, we would like to thank our readers, authors and reviewers for continued support of NPG Asia Materials in the past year, and would like to invite potential authors to consider submission of their best results to the journal.