Nature Materials

About Nature Materials

Journal Overview

Nature Materials is a monthly, peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) that covers the full breadth of materials science and engineering. Launched in 2002, it was Nature Portfolio's first dedicated research title in the physical sciences, and it has since become one of the most cited and most selective journals in the field. The journal publishes primary research of exceptional significance — Articles and Letters — alongside authoritative Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views, Q&A interviews, and Matters Arising contributions that together aim to serve as the voice of the worldwide materials research community.

Editorially, Nature Materials follows the classic Nature-family model: all editorial decisions are made by a team of full-time professional editors based in London, New York, Beijing, and Shanghai, with no external editorial board. The current Chief Editor is Ali Stoddart, who returned to the journal in July 2024. With a 2025 Journal Impact Factor of 38.0, the journal consistently ranks among the top journals in materials science, condensed matter physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering. It operates on a hybrid publishing model: authors may publish via the traditional subscription route or choose gold open access for primary research articles on payment of an article processing charge.

Key Facts

Correction note: Several third-party profiles (including Wikipedia) still list Vincent Dusastre as the "launching and current chief editor." The journal's own editors page, checked on 10 October 2026, names Ali Stoddart as Chief Editor, in the role since July 2024. Dusastre was the launching editor; third-party sources appear not to have been updated.

History

Nature Materials was launched in 2002 as the Nature Publishing Group's first research journal devoted to the physical sciences. Its launch editorial, "Our changing nature" (published in Volume 1), explained the choice: materials science was recognized as one of the fastest-growing areas of technology — alongside biotechnology and information technology — and as a uniquely interdisciplinary field blending physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering. The editorial argued that the field, then expanding rapidly thanks to new abilities to manipulate structures at the nano and atomic scales, deserved a genuinely interdisciplinary publication that could help record and shape its future, bridging divides such as the cultural gap between "soft" and "hard" matter researchers.

From the outset, the journal adopted the editorial model of its parent title Nature: a full-time professional editorial staff, no external editorial board, editorial decisions made by the editors themselves (often after consultation with outside experts), and full editorial independence from Nature. The journal launched with then-novel online services including electronic manuscript submission, continuous online publication ahead of the monthly print issues, and supplementary information hosted on its website.

Over the following two decades the journal grew into one of the flagship titles of Nature Portfolio. In a 2011 editorial, "Dissecting our impact factor," the editors examined the citation distribution behind the journal's then–~30 impact factor, noting how a long tail of highly cited papers drives the average — an early contribution to the now-widespread debate about the limits of single-number journal metrics (Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA).

The journal's pages have carried many of the defining papers of 21st-century materials science, including landmark work on graphene, nanostructured energy materials, perovskite photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, and nanoionics (see Landmark Papers below). In July 2024, Ali Stoddart — who had joined Nature Materials as an editor in 2007 and subsequently left to launch Nature Reviews Materials (2016) and Nature Synthesis (2022) — returned to Nature Materials as Chief Editor.

Leadership and Editorial Team

All editorial decisions at Nature Materials are made by full-time professional editors employed by Springer Nature; the journal has no external editorial board. As of October 2026, the team listed on the journal's official editors page is:

• Chief Editor — Ali Stoddart (PhD), London. Joined Nature Materials in 2007 handling materials chemistry and biomaterials manuscripts; in 2016, as chief editor, she launched Nature Reviews Materials, the first physical-sciences title in the Nature Reviews portfolio, and in 2022 moved to launch Nature Synthesis. She returned to Nature Materials as Chief Editor in July 2024. She holds an MSci in chemistry from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in polymer synthesis from Durham University, and handles manuscripts on porous materials, membranes, and materials chemistry.
• Senior Editor and Team Leader — Stephen Shevlin (PhD), London. PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics (University College London); postdoctoral work at IBM Zurich and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Joined the journal in February 2017; handles energy materials, catalysis, and applied physics.
• Senior Editors: Stacey Chin (PhD, New York) — soft materials, soft robotics, bioinspired materials, DNA nanotechnology; Wei Fan (PhD, Beijing) — applied and device physics, optoelectronics, photovoltaics, neuromorphic computing; Xin Li (PhD, Shanghai) — nanomaterials, structural materials, mechanical properties; Amos Martinez (PhD, London) — photonics, plasmonics, metamaterials; Daniel McNally (PhD, New York) — correlated electron systems, topological materials, spintronics.
• Associate Editor: Guanlan Zhao (PhD, Shanghai) — energy materials and catalysis.

The editors' individual areas of manuscript responsibility are published on the journal's website, and authors are encouraged to direct presubmission enquiries to the most relevant editor.

Aims & Scope

Nature Materials describes itself as a monthly multidisciplinary journal that brings together cutting-edge research from across the entire spectrum of materials science and engineering. The journal's scope spans applied and fundamental aspects of synthesis and processing, structure and composition, properties and performance of materials — where "materials" are understood as substances in the condensed states (liquid, solid, colloidal) that are designed or manipulated for technological ends.

Beyond publishing papers of exceptional significance and quality, the journal aims to provide a forum in which materials scientists can develop a shared identity and exchange ideas across established subdisciplinary boundaries, taking an interdisciplinary, integrated, and balanced approach to all areas of materials research. Its readership comprises scientists in both academia and industry who are engaged in discovering and developing materials and materials-related concepts.

Research areas explicitly covered include: engineering and structural materials (metals, alloys, ceramics, composites); organic and soft materials (glasses, colloids, liquid crystals, polymers); bio-inspired, biomedical, and biomolecular materials; optical, photonic, and optoelectronic materials; magnetic materials; materials for electronics; superconducting materials; catalytic and separation materials; materials for energy; nanoscale materials and processes; computation, modelling, and materials theory; surfaces and thin films; and design, synthesis, processing, and characterization techniques.

In addition to primary research, the journal publishes Review articles, Perspectives, News & Views, Commentaries, Correspondence, interviews, and analyses of the broader materials landscape — with the stated ambition of being the voice of the worldwide materials science community.

Editorial Process and Peer Review

Manuscripts are submitted through the journal's online submission system, and the journal welcomes presubmission enquiries so authors can check suitability before preparing a full submission. Every submission is first assessed by the in-house professional editors, who decide whether it merits peer review — consistent with the journal's emphasis on rapid editorial decisions. The journal's official metrics page reports a median of 9 days from submission to first editorial decision (i.e., the point at which a manuscript is sent for review or declined).

Peer review follows Nature Portfolio's standard policies: reviewers remain anonymous to authors by default (reviewers may choose to sign their reports), and reports may be shared with other reviewers and with other Nature Portfolio journals if a manuscript is transferred. Nature Materials offers authors the option of double-anonymized peer review, under which authors remain anonymous to referees throughout consideration; authors who choose this route are responsible for anonymizing their manuscripts using the journal's checklist.

The journal's preprint policy permits posting to preprint servers, and it participates in the In Review preprint service. Articles, Letters, Reviews, and Perspectives are peer reviewed; Correspondence and Comments may be peer reviewed at the editors' discretion; News & Views are not peer reviewed. The median time from submission to acceptance is 204 days, which includes peer review and revision rounds. Authors may appeal editorial decisions or request transfer of their manuscript to another Nature Portfolio journal. Corresponding authors of accepted papers are asked to link an ORCID iD to their manuscript record before final acceptance.

Impact and Metrics

The following metrics are published on the journal's official journal-metrics page (nature.com), which cites Clarivate Analytics as the source for citation-impact measures. Springer Nature is a signatory of DORA and cautions that citation measures should be considered alongside a range of other metrics.

Conflicts across sources: Some third-party journal aggregators display markedly different figures and should be treated with caution. For example, journalsinsights.com lists an impact factor of 47.656 (labeled "2026–2027") and an APC of $11,690 — both conflict with the journal's own published figures (38.0 for 2025; $12,850). Aggregator sites also circulate acceptance-rate estimates (around 30%), but the journal does not publish an official acceptance rate, so such figures are unverified estimates, not facts. Third-party SJR/CiteScore/h-index values also vary by data vintage (e.g., resurchify lists SJR 14.204 and h-index 583 from 2025-vintage Scopus data, versus 13.131 on nature.com's 2025 metrics page).

Submission Guidelines

Authors are asked to confirm that Nature Materials is the right venue (via the aims and scope), that their work fits an accepted content type, and that they understand the journal's editorial policies, publishing models, and costs before submitting. Key content-type formats, per the official content-types page:

• Article: a substantial novel research study, often using several techniques or approaches. Main text up to 3,000 words; abstract up to 150 words; up to 6 display items (figures/tables); up to 50 references; structured as Introduction, Results, Discussion, and online Methods; peer reviewed.
• Letter: an important, novel research result presented more concisely than an Article. Introductory paragraph (up to 150 words) instead of an abstract; main text up to 2,000 words; 3–4 display items; typically up to 30 references; peer reviewed.
• Review: an authoritative, balanced survey of recent developments in a field (5,000–6,000 words; up to 100 references); peer reviewed.
• Perspective: a scholarly discussion of the literature that is too technical for a Comment but narrower or more viewpoint-driven than a Review (up to 4,000 words; up to 80 references); peer reviewed.
• Comment: a flexible, accessible format on topical scientific, commercial, ethical, legal, societal, or political issues (typically 1–3 pages; up to 15 references); peer review at the editors' discretion.
• Correspondence: short contributions (300–800 words, one display item, up to 10 references) commenting on issues relevant to the community; may not present research data.
• Matters Arising: exceptionally interesting and timely scientific comments on original research papers published in Nature Materials, via a specialist submission process.
• News & Views: commissioned commentaries on notable papers (by prior arrangement only); not peer reviewed. Q&A: interviews with researchers, mostly commissioned.

Initial submissions follow streamlined formatting requirements; detailed formatting is required only after acceptance in principle. Non-primary content types (Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views, Correspondence) may not contain original unpublished research findings and are not eligible for gold open access. Submissions are made through the journal's manuscript tracking system, with author accounts created at first submission.

Open Access and APC

Nature Materials is a hybrid journal. Authors of primary research articles (Articles and Letters) may choose between two publishing routes:

1. Traditional subscription publishing — the article is assessed, peer reviewed, and, if accepted, published behind the subscription paywall with no author-side fee.
2. Gold open access — the same editorial process applies, but on acceptance the authors (or their funders/institutions) pay an article processing charge (APC), and the final published article is made freely available to all readers under a Creative Commons license.

The official APC for gold open access in Nature Materials, as stated on the journal's publishing-options page, is £9,390.00 / $12,850.00 / €10,850.00 (VAT or local taxes may apply; the APC is determined at acceptance and does not vary with article length or figure count). Non-primary articles — Reviews, Perspectives, Comments, News & Views, and similar formats — are not eligible for gold open access and can only be published via the subscription route. Authors covered by institutional open-access agreements or qualifying for waivers/discounts should consult Springer Nature's open-access funding support pages.

Indexing and Abstracting

Nature Materials is indexed in the major scientific literature databases. The following is verified to the strongest available evidence for each service:

• MEDLINE / PubMed — confirmed: the journal's papers carry PubMed IDs and the NLM journal abbreviation Nat Mater (verified directly via PubMed records for landmark papers, e.g., PMIDs 17330084 and 15867920).
• Web of Science / Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate) — confirmed via the journal's official metrics page, which reports Clarivate-sourced Journal Impact Factor, 5-year JIF, Immediacy Index, Eigenfactor, and Article Influence Score.
• Scopus (Elsevier) — reported by third-party journal profiles (e.g., ores.su cites Scopus Source ID 17854; resurchify and askbisht list Scopus indexing); the official metrics page also reports Scopus-derived SNIP and SJR values, which implies Scopus coverage. Treat the dedicated "indexed in Scopus" claim as third-party cross-check, not a publisher statement.
• Embase, UGC CARE, and other lists — appear on aggregator indexing lists (e.g., journalsearches.com); not confirmed on an official publisher page, so flagged as third-party information.
• Nature Index — Nature Materials is included in the Nature Index's applied-sciences journal list (publisher listed as Springer Nature).

Cataloguing identifiers reported by third-party sources include CODEN NMAACR, LCCN 2003260101, and OCLC 51211555 (via Wikipedia — cross-check only).

Landmark Papers

A selection of genuinely influential papers published in Nature Materials, with DOIs verified via PubMed, nature.com, or OSTI records. (DOIs were checked individually; none are invented.)

1. "The rise of graphene" — A. K. Geim & K. S. Novoselov (2007), Nat. Mater. 6, 183–191. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1849. A landmark review by the future Nobel laureates surveying graphene's exceptional electronic quality and its emergence as a platform for "relativistic" condensed-matter physics, helping to ignite the global graphene research boom.
2. "Nanostructured materials for advanced energy conversion and storage devices" — A. S. Aricò, P. Bruce, B. Scrosati, J.-M. Tarascon & W. van Schalkwijk (2005), Nat. Mater. 4, 366–377. DOI: 10.1038/nmat1368. A highly cited review laying out how nanomaterials could transform lithium batteries, fuel cells, and supercapacitors — a foundational text for the energy-storage field.
3. "Solvent engineering for high-performance inorganic–organic hybrid perovskite solar cells" — N. J. Jeon et al. (2014), Nat. Mater. 13, 897–903. DOI: 10.1038/nmat4014. Introduced the anti-solvent engineering method for depositing dense, uniform perovskite films, delivering high-efficiency hysteresis-free solar cells and becoming one of the most influential papers of the perovskite photovoltaics era.
4. "Copper ion liquid-like thermoelectrics" — H. Liu et al. (2012), Nat. Mater. 11, 422–425. DOI: 10.1038/nmat3273. Showed that mobile copper ions in copper selenide give "liquid-like" thermal transport with crystal-like electrical properties, opening a new materials-design strategy for high-efficiency thermoelectrics.
5. "Ionic-liquid materials for the electrochemical challenges of the future" — M. Armand et al. (2009), Nat. Mater. 8, 621–629. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2448. A widely cited review establishing ionic liquids as safer, high-performance electrolytes for batteries and other electrochemical devices.
6. "Nanoionics-based resistive switching memories" — R. Waser & M. Aono (2007), Nat. Mater. 6, 833–840. DOI: 10.1038/nmat2023. A foundational review of resistive-switching memory devices based on ionic transport at the nanoscale — the conceptual basis for much of today's memristor and neuromorphic-computing hardware research.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is Nature Materials?
A monthly peer-reviewed journal from Nature Portfolio (Springer Nature) publishing high-significance research across all of materials science and engineering, plus reviews, perspectives, and community commentary.

2. Who publishes Nature Materials?
Nature Portfolio, part of Springer Nature. It was the publisher's first dedicated research journal in the physical sciences.

3. When was Nature Materials launched?
In 2002 (Volume 1); third-party profiles date the launch to September 2002.

4. How often is it published?
Monthly, with continuous online publication of articles ahead of each issue.

5. Who is the current Chief Editor?
Ali Stoddart, Chief Editor since July 2024. Note that some third-party sites still list launching editor Vincent Dusastre as current — the journal's own editors page shows Stoddart in the role.

6. What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print ISSN 1476-1122; electronic ISSN 1476-4660 (official, from nature.com).

7. What is the impact factor of Nature Materials?
38.0 for 2025 (Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate), with a 5-year impact factor of 44.6 — both published on the journal's official metrics page.

8. What is the acceptance rate?
The journal does not publicly disclose an acceptance rate. Figures circulating on aggregator websites are unverified estimates, not official data.

9. Is Nature Materials open access?
It is a hybrid journal: authors can publish via the subscription route at no charge or choose gold open access for primary research articles. Reviews and other non-primary content are subscription-only.

10. What is the article processing charge (APC)?
£9,390 / $12,850 / €10,850 for gold open access, per the journal's official publishing-options page (taxes may apply; set at acceptance).

11. How do I submit a manuscript?
Through the journal's online manuscript submission system; presubmission enquiries are welcome to check fit, and initial submissions follow streamlined formatting requirements.

12. How long does peer review take?
Official medians: 9 days from submission to first editorial decision, and 204 days from submission to acceptance (including revisions).

13. Is peer review single- or double-anonymized?
Reviewers are anonymous to authors by default (single-anonymized), and authors may opt for double-anonymized review, remaining anonymous to referees throughout.

14. How does Nature Materials differ from Nature Reviews Materials and Communications Materials?
Nature Materials publishes primary research of exceptional significance with professional in-house editors; Nature Reviews Materials is a separate reviews-only journal (launched 2016); Communications Materials is a selective fully open-access journal for significant advances of interest to specialists. All three are part of Nature Portfolio.