Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (AMF) — Journal Profile

Overview

Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (AMF) is a peer-reviewed international journal devoted to the rapidly developing field of additive manufacturing (AM) and related technologies. The journal is published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES) and is supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). It was launched on the Elsevier ScienceDirect platform in 2022 under the title Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering: Additive Manufacturing Frontiers and was renamed Additive Manufacturing Frontiers effective 1 January 2024, a change publicly announced by the journal in May 2024.

The journal positions itself as an international industrial journal for the additive manufacturing community, bridging academic research and industrial application. Its pages carry research articles, review articles, and special-issue collections spanning AM processes, materials, equipment, design methods, and applications across industries such as aerospace, biomedical engineering, energy, and general manufacturing.

History and background

The journal was founded in 2022 by Chinese and French additive manufacturing experts and launched on ScienceDirect, an event described in industry coverage as an important milestone for Chinese AM research publishing. From the outset it was conceived as an international outlet: although sponsored by the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society and supervised by CAST, its editorial leadership pairs Chinese and French expertise, and its content, special issues, and editorial board draw contributors from many countries.

During its first two volumes (2022–2023) the journal published under the longer title Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering: Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (ISSN 2772-6657), with article numbering in the 100xxx series (for example, research articles numbered 100086 through 100103 in late 2023). Effective with the January 2024 issues, the title was shortened to Additive Manufacturing Frontiers and assigned the new online ISSN 2950-4317, with article numbering moving to the 200xxx series. ScienceDirect retains the full archive under both titles, with the older title's issue pages marked "formerly known as" in relation to the current title.

By 2026 the journal had reached Volume 5, publishing quarterly issues (for example, Volume 5, Issue 1 in March 2026 and Volume 5, Issue 2 in June 2026), each containing regular research articles alongside special-issue article collections.

Governance: supervision, sponsorship, and publication

Three layers of governance define the journal's institutional identity:

• Supervision — China Association for Science and Technology (CAST): the journal's own description states that AMF is supervised by CAST, China's national federation of scientific and engineering societies. CAST supervision is a formal designation in the Chinese scholarly publishing system, indicating the journal operates within the national framework for society journals.
• Sponsorship — Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society (CMES): CMES is the journal's sponsoring society; ScienceDirect copyright notices credit the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society as the rights holder, with Elsevier Ltd. as the publisher.
• Publication — Elsevier Ltd.: the journal is published and hosted on the Elsevier ScienceDirect platform, giving it international distribution, DOI registration, and integration with Elsevier's discovery and citation infrastructure.

This structure — a Chinese engineering society journal published internationally by Elsevier — mirrors a broader trend of Chinese society journals partnering with major commercial publishers to reach global readerships while retaining society ownership.

Editorial leadership

The journal's top editorial leadership reflects its Chinese–French founding partnership:

• Editor-in-Chief — Bingheng Lu: Director of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center, Director of the National Engineering Research Center for Additive Manufacturing at Xi'an Jiaotong University, and an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Professor Lu is one of the pioneering figures of additive manufacturing research in China.
• Co-Editor-in-Chief — Alain Bernard: member of the French Academy of Engineering and affiliated with Ecole Centrale de Nantes, representing the French side of the journal's founding partnership.
• Executive Editor-in-Chief — Li Dichen: identified in journal communications as the executive editor-in-chief, including in connection with the 2024 special issue "30 Years of Development of Additive Manufacturing in China."
• Deputy Editor-in-Chief — Jian Lu: of City University of Hong Kong, listed among his editorial roles as a deputy editor-in-chief of the journal (under its former CJME:AMF title).

The journal also maintains a youth editorial board, with young editorial board members drawn from Chinese universities and research institutes — a common feature of Chinese journals aimed at cultivating the next generation of editors and reviewers.

Aims and scope

According to the publisher's journal page, Additive Manufacturing Frontiers is a peer-reviewed international journal focusing on the rapidly developing field of additive manufacturing and related technologies. In practice, its published content covers the full breadth of modern AM research:

• AM processes and equipment: powder bed fusion (laser and electron beam), directed energy deposition, stereolithography and vat photopolymerization, binder jetting, material extrusion, wire-arc additive manufacturing, multi-laser powder bed fusion, and emerging hybrid processes.
• Materials for AM: metal alloys (e.g., aluminum-magnesium-scandium-zirconium alloys, Inconel 625 and 718 nickel superalloys), ceramics (e.g., silicon nitride), polymers, and composites engineered for additive processes.
• Modeling and simulation: residual stress and deformation modeling, thermal distortion prediction, high-fidelity multilayer build-process simulation, and melt-pool control theory.
• Process–structure–property relationships: how heat input, aging parameters, and process settings govern microstructure, anisotropy, and mechanical performance of additively manufactured parts.
• Design for AM: customized and ergonomic product design, topology and lattice structures, and material–structure integrated design.
• Applications: aerospace components, biomedical devices, and industrial tooling, with attention to qualification, anisotropy control, and post-processing.

The journal welcomes both fundamental research and work with clear industrial relevance, consistent with its self-description as an international industrial journal for the AM field.

Article types and publication model

Content published in AMF includes full-length research articles, review articles, and special-issue articles. All articles observed on ScienceDirect are published open access, freely readable with PDF download. The journal operates on a quarterly rhythm: four issues per year, with volumes incrementing annually (Volume 5 corresponding to 2026). Individual issues combine regular articles with articles belonging to curated special-issue collections, and ScienceDirect also lists "articles in press" style in-progress issues whose articles are final and fully citable before the issue closes.

Peer review and publishing timeline

AMF is a peer-reviewed journal. The publisher's journal insights page displays a publishing timeline of 64 days from submission to acceptance, indicating a relatively rapid editorial process for a young journal. Detailed peer-review policies — such as the review model (single- versus double-anonymized), typical number of reviewers, or appeals procedures — are not publicly disclosed on the pages reviewed for this profile; prospective authors should consult the journal's guide for authors on its Elsevier page.

Abstracting, indexing, and metrics

The publisher's journal insights page lists the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) — part of the Web of Science Core Collection — under abstracting and indexing, and shows a CiteScore of 1.8. Both figures are publisher-displayed and attributed here as such; independent verification in Clarivate's and Scopus's own databases is recommended before citing them formally. As a journal launched in 2022, AMF is young by bibliometric standards: metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor require multiple years of citation accumulation, and no Clarivate Journal Impact Factor was displayed on the publisher's page at the time of this profile's research. The journal's subject area is listed as Mechanical Engineering.

Special issues and article collections

Themed collections are a prominent feature of AMF's publishing program. Special issues and article collections documented on the journal's ScienceDirect pages include:

• Material-Structure Integrated Additive Manufacturing — edited by Dongdong Gu (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Jihong Zhu (Northwestern Polytechnical University), Rossi Setchi (Cardiff University), and Yicha Zhang (Université de Technologie Belfort-Montbéliard).
• Additive Manufacturing of Advanced Ceramics — edited by Zhangwei Chen (Shenzhen University), Paolo Colombo (University of Padova), Jens Günster (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und Prüfung, BAM), and Soshu Kirihara (Osaka University).
• Smart Composite Structures Additive Manufacturing — edited by Kelvin Fu (University of Delaware), Masahito Ueda (Nihon University), and Xiaoyong Tian (Xi'an Jiaotong University).
• Space Manufacturing Technology — associated with Gong Wang (CAS Key Laboratory of Space Manufacturing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Xiaoyong Tian (State Key Laboratory for Manufacturing System Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University).
• 30 Years of Development of Additive Manufacturing in China — a 2024 special issue organized by Executive Editor-in-Chief Li Dichen, featuring contributions from more than ten representative Chinese AM research teams, including work on frontiers in laser additive manufacturing technology.

These collections illustrate the journal's strategy of convening international guest-editor teams around high-momentum subfields.

Readership and audience

The journal addresses researchers in mechanical and manufacturing engineering, materials scientists, equipment developers, and engineers applying AM in aerospace, biomedical, automotive, and energy sectors. Its bilingual institutional roots and open-access model make it particularly visible to the Chinese AM research community as well as international readers via ScienceDirect.

Relationship to sibling journals

Readers should distinguish AMF from several similarly named titles:

• Additive Manufacturing (Elsevier, ISSN 2214-8604) — the flagship Elsevier journal in the field, subscription-based with open-access options.
• Additive Manufacturing Letters (Elsevier, ISSN 2772-3690) — a companion open-access journal focused on short communications, launched in 2021.
• Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering — the long-established CMES journal from whose branding AMF's original title derived; AMF is a distinct, separately numbered journal rather than a section of it.

Author guidance (general)

Manuscripts are handled through the journal's Elsevier editorial system linked from its ScienceDirect journal page. As with all scholarly submissions, authors should verify the current guide for authors — including formatting requirements, article-type definitions, authorship and ethics policies, and any publication charges — on the official journal page before submitting, since such details can change and were not exhaustively documented for this profile.

Frequently asked questions

Is Additive Manufacturing Frontiers open access? Articles observed on ScienceDirect are labeled open access and are freely readable with PDF download.

What was the journal's former name? From its 2022 launch through 2023 it was titled Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering: Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (ISSN 2772-6657). It became Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (ISSN 2950-4317) effective January 2024.

Who publishes the journal? Elsevier Ltd. publishes it on behalf of the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society; it is supervised by the China Association for Science and Technology.

Is it indexed in Web of Science? The publisher's journal page lists the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI). Inclusion in other Web of Science indexes should be verified directly in Clarivate's databases.

How fast is the editorial process? The publisher displays a 64-day submission-to-acceptance timeline on the journal's insights page.

The journal in the context of China's additive manufacturing ecosystem

AMF's founding in 2022 coincided with a period of rapid expansion in China's additive manufacturing sector. Industry analyses of the period describe nearly twenty research teams across more than fifty AM laboratories in Chinese universities and research institutes working on metal additive manufacturing alone, alongside a growing domestic equipment industry serving aerospace, medical, and industrial markets. National policy has treated AM as a strategic manufacturing technology, and the establishment of the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Center — directed by the journal's own editor-in-chief — reflects the technology's institutional weight.

Within this landscape, AMF serves a dual role. For Chinese researchers, it offers a society-owned, internationally published outlet aligned with national research priorities. For international readers, it provides a window into Chinese AM research — including work from teams that may publish less frequently in Western-established journals — while its French co-editorship and Elsevier distribution keep it anchored in the global literature. The "30 Years of Development of Additive Manufacturing in China" special issue exemplifies this bridging function: a curated, English-language retrospective of three decades of Chinese AM progress, from early rapid-prototyping work to contemporary laser additive manufacturing.

The journal's youth editorial board is another ecosystem-building feature. By recruiting early-career researchers from Chinese universities as young editorial board members and guest editors, AMF invests in editorial capacity for the field — a model widely used by Chinese journals to professionalize peer review and broaden the reviewer pool beyond senior academics.

What the archive shows: reading the journal's trajectory

A reader browsing the ScienceDirect archive can trace the journal's short but telling history. The 2022–2023 volumes under the original CJME:AMF title show a journal finding its footing: foundational articles on stereolithography process parameters for ceramic slurries, reviews of residual stress modeling for metal AM, numerical studies of thermal distortion in multi-laser powder bed fusion, and investigations of aging treatments for laser-deposited Inconel 718 — the core process–materials–modeling triad of the field. The 2024 rename to Additive Manufacturing Frontiers coincided with visibly broadened thematic ambition, including the ceramics, composites, and space-manufacturing collections. By 2025–2026, regular issues mixed process research (such as wire-arc AM of aluminum-magnesium-scandium-zirconium alloys with controlled heat input to manage strength and anisotropy) with application-driven work, reflecting the field's maturation from process development toward qualified, application-ready manufacturing.

Volume numbering confirms steady quarterly publication: Volume 4 in 2025, Volume 5 in 2026, with issues appearing in March, June, September, and December. The in-progress issue model means accepted articles become citable without waiting for issue compilation — important for a fast-moving field where pre-publication delays cost citations.

How AMF compares with its Elsevier siblings

For authors, the practical distinction is straightforward: AMF suits full-length studies, especially those connected to the Chinese and European AM research communities or to its themed collections; Additive Manufacturing remains the highest-impact general venue; Additive Manufacturing Letters serves concise, rapid reports. Because all three live on ScienceDirect, discovery across them is seamless.

More frequently asked questions

Does AMF charge authors? The journal publishes open access; whether it levies an article processing charge, offers waivers, or is subsidized by its sponsoring society was not stated on the pages reviewed — check the current guide for authors.

Can I cite the old title? Articles from 2022–2023 carry the former title Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering: Additive Manufacturing Frontiers; cite them exactly as published, using their DOIs, which remain stable across the rename.

What language does the journal publish in? English — all observed articles, including those from Chinese teams, are published in English, consistent with the journal's international positioning.

Who should consider submitting? Researchers in AM processes, materials, simulation, and design — particularly teams seeking an open-access, society-backed venue with Chinese–European editorial networks and active special-issue programming.

Where can I read it? The full archive is freely available on ScienceDirect under the journal's title, with the 2022–2023 content retained under the former title.

What is not publicly disclosed

The following details were not verified on official sources reviewed for this profile and are therefore left unstated rather than estimated: the complete current editorial board roster beyond the named chief editors; the peer-review model (single- versus double-anonymized) and reviewer counts; acceptance rates; article processing charges, if any; the full text of the journal's aims and scope beyond the published summary; and current-year Clarivate or Scopus metrics beyond the publisher-displayed figures attributed above.

Sources consulted

Elsevier ScienceDirect journal pages for Additive Manufacturing Frontiers (journal home, all-issues archive, insights/aims-and-scope summary, news announcement of the January 2024 rename, and special-issue listings); the former-title archive pages (Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering: Additive Manufacturing Frontiers, ISSN 2772-6657); industry coverage of the journal's 2022 founding and editorial leadership (Metal AM); institutional pages documenting editorial roles (City University of Hong Kong scholar profile; Xi'an Jiaotong University CV records); and publisher communications regarding the "30 Years of Development of Additive Manufacturing in China" special issue. Bibliometric figures are attributed to the publisher's journal insights page and have not been independently verified in Clarivate or Scopus databases.