Editorial - Materials Research - Ibero-american Journal of Materials: judicious, fair and educative!

Abstract

This 42 th issue of Materials Research contains 13 original articles and one extensive review article. Mat Res. is also published in electronic format at Scielo (www.scielo.br/mr). The rejected /accepted ratio still fluctuates at around 40-50%. About a hundred articles are under review at present. CAPES-Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior-www.capes.gov.br recently ranked wellknown scientific periodicals in seven different levels, which vary from A1 (best), A2, B1, B2, B3, B4 to B5 (worst). From our particular standpoint, important news is that Materials Research has been qualified as a B1 journal, and this is probably a fair position for Mat. Res., a 10-year old periodical that has only recently been included in the ISI database! On the other hand, this editor (who has been serving for many years in the editorial boards of seven other scientific journals) disagrees with the ranking given to various periodicals. For instance, some archival A1 periodicals such as Nature, Science, Physical Review Letters, Macromolecules, Acta Materialia, Biomaterials and Advanced Functional Materials (to name a few) are much more selective than several others listed in that same category (I will not list those here for obvious reasons). Not to mention that Nature Materials is not even in the list! As regards to the particular research field that I know best (vitreous materials), Elsevier's JNCS-Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids-was placed in a significantly lower position than journals that are not as rigorous or relevant, with impact factor <1 and much shorter cited half-life! The JNCS started about 50 years ago, has an impact factor of about 1.4 (mostly because their process of analysis with 2 or 3 referees is slow) and cited half-life of over 10 years (one of the longest among all the materials journals), and is, undoubtedly, one of the three most important periodicals to all those working on vitreous materials. Another very important periodical in