Journal of Materials Science Materials in Medicine

About Journal of Materials Science Materials in Medicine

Journal at a Glance

The Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine is a Springer journal devoted to biomaterials and tissue engineering, and to the use of materials as medical and dental implants, prostheses and devices. The Journals World record for this post gives the print ISSN 0957-4530 and the electronic ISSN 1573-4838, and names Springer Science+Business Media as publisher, all of which match the publisher's own journal pages. Note the exact title: the journal's name contains a colon, Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, because it began as the medically focused companion of the long-running Journal of Materials Science, a relationship that still shapes its identity and its readership.

Journal listings trace the journal to 1990, giving it more than three decades of continuous publication covering the modern era of biomaterials science, from the consolidation of bioactive glasses and calcium phosphate ceramics, through the rise of tissue engineering in the 1990s and 2000s, to today's work on nanomedicine, regenerative constructs and additively manufactured implants. For researchers in biomedical engineering, dental materials, orthopaedic biomaterials and related fields, it is one of the established specialist venues, and it serves as the official journal of the European Society for Biomaterials, a connection documented in the society's and publisher's descriptions of the title.

Aims and Scope in the Publisher's Terms

Springer's official aims and scope statement is the authoritative summary, and this profile follows it closely. The journal publishes refereed papers providing significant progress in the application of biomaterials and tissue engineering constructs as medical or dental implants, prostheses and devices. Coverage spans a wide range of topics from basic science to clinical applications, around the central theme of materials in medicine and dentistry. The central element is the development of synthetic and natural materials used in orthopaedic, maxillofacial, cardiovascular, neurological, ophthalmic and dental applications.

Springer lists the special biomedical topics the journal emphasises: biomaterial synthesis and characterisation, biocompatibility studies, nanomedicine, tissue engineering constructs and cell substrates, regenerative medicine, computer modelling, and other advanced experimental methodologies. That list is a practical guide to fit. A manuscript whose contribution is a new material, a new way of characterising a material, a rigorous study of how a material behaves in a biological environment, or a construct designed to regenerate tissue sits squarely within scope. A purely clinical paper with no materials contribution, or a purely materials paper with no plausible medical application, will struggle, because the journal's defining question is always what the material does in medicine or dentistry.

Scope in Depth

Implant and device materials by application area

Orthopaedic applications are a historic strength: bone cements, joint replacement materials, fixation devices, bone graft substitutes and coatings that encourage bone bonding all feature regularly. Maxillofacial and dental work covers dental implants, restorative materials, cements and scaffolds for craniofacial repair. Cardiovascular papers address stents, grafts, heart valve materials and blood-contacting surfaces. Neurological and ophthalmic applications, from neural interfaces to intraocular materials, complete the clinical map Springer sets out, and authors should position their work within one or more of these application areas explicitly.

Material classes

The journal covers the full biomaterials palette: metals and alloys, including degradable magnesium systems; ceramics and glasses, including hydroxyapatite and bioactive glasses; polymers, both synthetic and natural; hydrogels; and composites that combine these families. Natural materials and biologically derived matrices are equally in scope, consistent with the publisher's description of synthetic and natural materials as the journal's central element. Studies of surface modification, sterilisation effects, degradation behaviour and mechanical performance, such as deformation, fatigue and fracture of implant materials, belong here when they are tied to medical use.

Biological evaluation and tissue engineering

Biocompatibility is a defining theme. Papers examine cell and tissue responses to materials, protein adsorption, inflammatory and immune reactions, and in vivo performance after implantation. Tissue engineering constructs and cell substrates, scaffolds designed to support regeneration of bone, cartilage, skin, nerve and other tissues, form a second pillar, together with regenerative medicine strategies that combine materials with cells, growth factors or gene delivery. Nanomedicine papers, including nanoparticle systems for imaging and therapy, are welcomed where the materials science is substantial.

Methods and modelling

Springer explicitly includes computer modelling and advanced experimental methodologies. Finite element analysis of implants, modelling of degradation or drug release, advanced microscopy and spectroscopy of material and tissue interfaces, and novel characterisation methods all fit, provided they advance the development or understanding of materials in medicine rather than standing as methods in search of an application.

History and Editorial Identity

The journal was established in 1990 as a companion to the Journal of Materials Science, extending that title's materials remit into medicine and dentistry; coverage statements in major journal listings run continuously from 1990 to the present. The founding editor-in-chief was William Bonfield, a central figure in the development of biomaterials as a discipline, and Serena M. Best, of the Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials, has served as an editor of the journal, a role documented in Springer's own pages, where she is thanked as editor in a 2008 special issue on biomaterials and regenerative medicine in Latin America. Special issues drawing on the European Society for Biomaterials community, including selected contributions linked to the society's annual conference, are a recurring feature of the journal's programme.

Springer now lists the journal in the Directory of Open Access Journals within its indexing statement, reflecting its move to an open access model in recent years; authors should confirm the current licence and any article processing charge on the publisher's page before submitting, because open access arrangements and charges change and a figure quoted from a secondary listing may already be out of date. A specific current charge is therefore not stated in this profile.

Indexing and Discoverability

Springer's official journal page gives an extensive abstracting and indexing list, which this profile reproduces in substance: ANVUR, the BFI List, Baidu, CLOCKSS, CNKI, CNPIEC, Chemical Abstracts Service, Chimica, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences list, Current Contents in Life Sciences, the Directory of Open Access Journals, Dimensions, EBSCO, EI Compendex, EMBASE, EMBiology, Google Scholar, INIS Atomindex, INSPEC, the Japanese Science and Technology Agency, Medline, Naver, OCLC WorldCat Discovery Service, Ovid Discovery, Pathway Studio, Portico, ProQuest, Reaxys, SCImago, SCOPUS, the Science Citation Index Expanded, Semantic Scholar, TD Net Discovery Service, Wanfang and eLibrary.ru.

Two entries matter most for most authors. Coverage in SCOPUS and in the Science Citation Index Expanded means the journal sits inside the two citation ecosystems that universities and funders most often use for evaluation, and Medline coverage makes its clinically relevant content retrievable through PubMed. The twin Journals World record discussed below attributes an H-index of 154 to the journal; that figure comes from the site's underlying bibliometric data rather than from the publisher, and it is reported here with that attribution, as a secondary figure, not as a publisher-published metric. Current Journal Impact Factor values should be taken from Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports or the publisher's journal page at the time of reading, not from this profile.

Duplicate Record on This Site

Journals World carries two posts for this journal. This post, 333666, uses the slug journal-of-materials-science-materials-in-medicine-2 and renders the title without its colon. A second post, 14267, uses the base slug and the correct colon form of the title. Direct verification of both records shows they carry the same ISSN pair, 0957-4530 and 1573-4838, in reversed order, and therefore describe one and the same journal. Post 14267 is itself a thin template record of about 296 words with no depth marker, so under the batch rules this post has been completed to full depth and the pair is reported for the merge queue, with the recommendation that the depth content survive on the post carrying the official title form and original slug. The older record also contains an internal error, describing the publisher as a number rather than as Springer; that garbled field is noted for the review file and has not been reproduced here.

Publishing in the Journal: Practical Guidance

Prospective authors should begin with the publisher's aims and scope and recent issues, checking that their material system, application area and type of contribution match the patterns Springer describes. Manuscripts are expected to characterise materials thoroughly and to support biological claims with appropriate in vitro or in vivo evidence; a synthesis reported without characterisation, or a biocompatibility claim resting on a single cell viability assay, is unlikely to satisfy referees at an established biomaterials journal. Reporting standards for animal work, cell work and statistics follow Springer's journal policies, and the journal's ethics statement requires compliance with international, national and institutional standards for research involving human or animal participants, their data and biological material.

Because the journal is refereed and selective, fit is the first filter. Authors should state, in the introduction and cover letter, which of the publisher's listed themes the paper advances, whether that is biomaterial synthesis and characterisation, biocompatibility, nanomedicine, tissue engineering constructs, regenerative medicine or modelling, and which clinical application area it serves. Papers arising from the European Society for Biomaterials community, including conference-linked special issues, should follow the specific calls and deadlines Springer publishes for those collections.

Audience and Standing

The readership spans materials scientists, biomedical engineers, dentists, orthopaedic and maxillofacial researchers, and clinicians who work with implants and devices. That breadth explains the journal's editorial insistence on papers that speak across the laboratory and clinic boundary. Within the Journals World classification the journal has been treated as a second-quartile venue in its categories in the site's underlying data; quartile positions move by year and category and are attributed here to that secondary data rather than asserted as a current publisher figure. Its longevity, society affiliation, and indexing in SCOPUS, the Science Citation Index Expanded and Medline together explain its continued use as a reference point in biomaterials publishing.

Research Themes in the Journal's Pages

The journal's published content shows the publisher's scope statement in action. Bioactive glass and calcium phosphate research, including granules used as bone substitutes in orthopaedic procedures and coatings intended to bond implants to bone, has been a continuing theme since the journal's early years, reflecting the interests of its founding editorial community. Hydroxyapatite, in coatings, composites and porous scaffolds for bone ingrowth, recurs throughout the archive, as do studies of how surface chemistry and roughness change protein adsorption and cell attachment. These are the questions on which implant success quietly depends, and the journal's willingness to publish careful characterisation alongside biological testing is why such papers remain useful long after faster-moving topics have dated.

Later volumes show the field's expansion. Degradable metals, particularly magnesium alloys designed to support healing and then dissolve, brought corrosion science into the journal's centre. Polymer science contributed drug-eluting systems, hydrogel scaffolds and electrospun matrices. Work on zinc oxide nanostructures in composite wound dressings, on fullerene-based coatings for dental and orthodontic applications, and on three-dimensional printing and bioprinting for neurological and other applications, all published in the journal's recent volumes, demonstrates how completely nanomaterials and additive manufacturing have been absorbed into its traditional remit. The through-line is constant: a material, made and characterised properly, tested against a medical or dental purpose.

What Good Papers in This Journal Do

Referees at an established biomaterials journal apply a recognisable standard, and prospective authors can read it off the published record. First, the material must be characterised well enough for another group to reproduce it: composition, structure, surface state and mechanical behaviour as relevant. Second, the biological evaluation must match the claim: a paper claiming suitability for bone repair needs more than a generic cytotoxicity screen, and a paper claiming antibacterial action needs a defensible microbiological method. Third, statistics and replication must be adequate, and in vivo work must be justified, designed and reported to contemporary animal research standards. Fourth, the discussion must place the new material honestly against the existing options for the same clinical problem, including the option of doing nothing new.

Papers fail these tests in predictable ways. A novel composite reported with no mechanical data, a scaffold whose pore structure is asserted but never measured, a degradation study too short to support its conclusions, or cell work performed on a material different from the one characterised, all invite rejection at this level. Conversely, the journal has room for incremental but solid advances: a better processing route for a known glass, a rigorous comparison of two sterilisation methods, or a careful long-term degradation dataset can each constitute the significant progress the publisher's scope statement asks for, because the field builds cumulatively on exactly such work.

The Journal and the Biomaterials Community

The connection with the European Society for Biomaterials gives the journal a community function beyond ordinary manuscript handling. Society conferences generate special issues, early-career researchers encounter the journal through the society, and the editorial conversation reflects European biomaterials priorities while the authorship is global. The journal also sits in a family relationship with the Journal of Materials Science, one of the oldest general materials journals, and readers move between the two: fundamental materials characterisation often appears in the parent title, while the medical application, biological evaluation and translational argument belong in this companion. Understanding that division helps authors choose correctly between them and helps readers understand why two journals with similar names publish visibly different papers.

For institutions evaluating the journal, the stable signals are its longevity since 1990, its society affiliation, its publisher, and its presence in SCOPUS, the Science Citation Index Expanded and Medline. Those signals have remained consistent across the journal's move to open access publishing in recent years, and they are a firmer basis for judgement than any single year's citation metric, which in a mid-sized specialist field moves with the publication of a handful of highly cited reviews.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the journal's exact title? Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Medicine, with a colon. This post's title omits the colon; the official title includes it.

• What are its ISSNs? Print ISSN 0957-4530 and electronic ISSN 1573-4838.

• Who publishes it? Springer, as part of Springer Nature; this record names Springer Science+Business Media.

• When was it founded? Journal listings trace it to 1990, as a companion to the Journal of Materials Science.

• Whose official journal is it? It is documented as the official journal of the European Society for Biomaterials.

• What does it publish? Refereed papers on biomaterials and tissue engineering constructs used as medical or dental implants, prostheses and devices, from basic science to clinical applications.

• Is it indexed in Scopus and Medline? Yes. Springer's own indexing list includes SCOPUS, the Science Citation Index Expanded and Medline, among many other services.

A final note concerns the journal's name in citations. The registered abbreviation, J Mater Sci Mater Med in National Library of Medicine style, drops the colon that the full title carries, and databases differ in whether they render the subtitle with a colon, a dash or a space. Authors preparing reference lists should follow the citation style of the journal they are submitting to rather than copying any single database's rendering, and searchers looking for the journal's papers should try the ISSN, 0957-4530, which retrieves the journal's output regardless of how its title has been punctuated in any given record.

Researchers citing the journal should include the article DOI assigned by Springer wherever one exists, because the DOI resolves through changes in platform addresses and guarantees that a reader reaches the version of record rather than a preprint, a conference abstract of the same work, or a similarly titled paper in the parent Journal of Materials Science.

Verification Notes

This profile is anchored to the Journals World record for post 333666, giving ISSNs 09574530 and 15734838 and publisher Springer Science+Business Media. The aims and scope and the indexing list are taken from Springer's official journal pages. The founding year and society affiliation are taken from journal listings and society-related descriptions and are attributed as such in the text. Structured-field conflicts noted for review: this post's title omits the colon of the official title, and the duplicate post 14267 contains a garbled publisher statement. No current impact factor or processing charge is asserted, because those figures change and should be read from the publisher or Clarivate at the time of use.