Athena Closes Materials Highlights Due to Competition and Lack of Article Flow

Athena International Publishing today announced the closure of the journal “Materials Highlights” citing competition and lack of article flow as the main reasons. The journal transferred to Athena from Atlantis Press in 2022 after they were acquired by Springer Nature, but did not succeed to publish another issue since moving onto the Athena platform. As of today, the journal is no longer open for submissions.

Materials Highlights was launched in 2019 by Atlantis Press as an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing articles on the latest highlights in materials science and engineering. The emphasis of the journal was on new ideas for preparing functional materials and on the relationship between material properties (composition, structure, shape) and functions (biomedical, energy and environmental applications) at all length scales. The journal scope covered the design, preparation, characterization and application of all kinds of functional materials. After launching, the journal successfully published two volumes in 2020 & 2021, but as it turns out these would be its last.

When Atlantis Press was acquired by Springer Nature in 2021, they decided that Materials Highlights would not be retained post acquisition. Hence the journal was transferred to Athena International Publishing in 2022, but despite efforts to expand the Editorial Board and promote the journal within the broadly defined fields of materials science and engineering, it did not succeed to publish another issue since moving onto the Athena platform. The publisher quotes strong competition and lack of article flow as the main reasons for this decision. One of the Editors-in-Chief of the journal, Prof. Gareth Williams from University College London, says: “I believe that closing the journal is the best way forward. There are so many journals in this field now that establishing a new one, with no impact factor yet, is incredibly challenging. The number of invitations I get to submit to new journals in this field seems to be increasing exponentially and I end up ignoring all of them as there are just too many...”.

Following this decision, Materials Highlights is no longer open for new submissions effective immediately. The archive of published articles will remain available on the Athena platform, as well as in the e-Depot of the National Library of The Netherlands. All metrics for the journal will continue to be updated where relevant.

Athena International Publishing is an open access publisher of scientific, technical and medical (STM) information which was founded at the end of 2021 to further support the efficient dissemination of “sound science” and the advancement and exchange of scientific knowledge. The company headquarters is based in Amsterdam in The Netherlands and our team consists of a group of publishing professionals with more than 150 years of combined experience across all major STM publishers and service providers in the industry. The Athena publishing portfolio consists of journals, book series, conference proceedings and books covering all STM disciplines including Mathematical and Physical Sciences, Biology and Life Sciences, Health and Medical Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities. All our publications are Open Access and hence free to read, download, copy and distribute under the terms of the applicable Creative Commons end-user license. For more information, please visit https://www.athena-publishing.com.