Nature Reviews Materials

About Nature Reviews Materials

Nature Reviews Materials: Journal Overview

Nature Reviews Materials is an online-only review journal published by Springer Nature (Nature Portfolio), with its editorial team based in London, United Kingdom. Launched in 2016 as the first Nature Reviews title in the physical sciences, it publishes authoritative Reviews, Perspectives and Comments spanning the full breadth of materials science — from the making, measuring, modelling and manufacturing of materials through to their use in devices and real-world applications (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

The journal describes itself as an international monthly review journal for the weekly publication of review content in all scientific disciplines within materials science. In practice, new content is published online continuously and assembled into monthly volumes; volume 1 corresponds to 2016, volume 2 to 2017, and so on, with articles cited under the journal's DOI prefix 10.1038/s41578 as Nat. Rev. Mater. (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

Nature Reviews Materials sits at the very top of materials science publishing by citation impact. According to the journal's official metrics page, its Journal Impact Factor stands at 83.3 (2025) with a 5-year Journal Impact Factor of 110.4 (2025) — figures that rank it among the highest-impact journals in any scientific field (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact, accessed October 2026).

The journal is a subscription title rather than an open-access journal: most of its reviews and perspectives are accessible to subscribers and institutional licensees, while authors retain the option to make individual articles open access where applicable under Springer Nature policies. Its exact article processing charges are not published on a journal-specific page, so prospective authors should confirm current fees and open access options on the publisher's official open access pages before relying on any number (see "Open Access and APC" below).

History of Nature Reviews Materials

The first issue of Nature Reviews Materials appeared in January 2016, with an introductory editorial titled "Materials in our time" setting out the journal's mission: to cover the principal themes that motivate materials scientists and are of societal importance, from colloidal materials and hydrogels to ionic liquids and metamaterials. The editorial noted that major advances in materials science would emerge from societal needs — energy storage and harvesting, electronic devices, and health — a forecast that shaped the journal's early commissions on computational design of energy materials and hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites for photovoltaics (source: nature.com/articles/natrevmats20151).

The timing of the launch was deliberate. In 2015, Web of Science indexed roughly 110,000 articles under the materials science umbrella; the editors judged the moment ripe for a journal that could distil that abundance of information into authoritative, curated reviews. The journal was launched with the explicit ambition of becoming the first high-impact reviews journal dedicated to materials science — and the first Nature Reviews journal in the physical sciences (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4, tenth-anniversary editorial published 9 January 2026).

The founding chief editor was Ali Stoddart, who had joined Nature Materials in 2007 and launched Nature Reviews Materials in 2016. She subsequently led the launch of Nature Synthesis in 2022 and returned to Nature Materials as chief editor in July 2024 (source: nature.com/nmat/editors).

A decade on, the journal's own retrospective reports that it has become "a trusted reference for the global materials community." Between 2016 and late 2025, it published 488 Reviews and Perspectives and 152 opinion pieces, cumulatively attracting more than 200,000 citations. Its coverage has shifted markedly with the field: following the 2015 launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the journal turned toward urgent real-world problems in clean energy, resource efficiency and climate resilience. Battery materials became a central theme, solar-technology coverage expanded sharply, and — after the COVID-19 pandemic — lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery brought nanomedicine to the forefront. The author pool has also broadened: in 2025 the journal featured authors from 28 countries, compared with 19 in 2016 (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4).

Notable editorial milestones include a 2022 Collection on plastics — two articles from which were cited in reports by the OECD and the World Health Organization — and, more recently, a Series on materials circularity framing materials innovation within regulatory, economic and social realities (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4).

Leadership and Editorial Team

The current Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Materials is Dr. Giulia Pacchioni, who has held the role since January 2022. She received her Master's degree in physics from the University of Milan in 2011 (thesis work on metal clusters implanted in electroluminescent polymers for OLED devices) and completed her PhD on nanostructures on surfaces studied by scanning tunnelling microscopy in the group of Professor Harald Brune at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. Pacchioni joined Springer Nature in October 2015 for the launch of Nature Reviews Materials, spent 2018 heading the launch team of Nature Reviews Physics, and has led Nature Reviews Materials as Chief Editor since January 2022. Her primary subject areas are quantum materials, superconductivity, topological materials, 2D materials, metamaterials and structural materials. She is based in the London office (source: nature.com/natrevmats/editors).

The senior editorial team includes Dr. Charlotte Allard (Senior Editor), who completed a PhD in engineering physics at École Polytechnique de Montréal on the encapsulation of organic molecules in carbon and boron nitride nanotubes for biomedical applications. She joined Nature Reviews Materials in March 2022 as an Associate Editor and was promoted to Senior Editor in March 2024; her areas are photovoltaics and biomaterials (source: nature.com/natrevmats/editors).

Like the other Nature titles, Nature Reviews Materials has no external editorial board. All editorial decisions are made by a dedicated team of full-time professional editors with relevant research and editorial backgrounds (source: nature.com/nmat/editors, describing the model shared across Nature titles).

The journal is additionally supported by the Reviews Cross-Journal Editorial Team, a group of fifteen highly skilled editors with a combined 175+ years of editorial experience within the Nature journals. Established in 2016, the team works across the Nature Reviews portfolio as needed, handling content in the life, clinical, physical and social sciences. It also handles all Research Briefing articles for Nature-branded research journals, having pioneered that article type in 2022 — with 2,500 Research Briefings published across 35 research journals by the end of 2025 (source: nature.com/natrevmats/reviews-cross-journal-editorial-team).

Aims & Scope

According to its official aims page, Nature Reviews Materials publishes authoritative reviews and perspectives on topics across the full spectrum of materials science — spanning everything from materials design and synthesis to their use in devices and real-life applications. The journal states that its aim is to cover the making, measuring, modelling and manufacturing of materials, following materials science through the pipeline from laboratory discovery to functional device (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/aims; nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

Reviews and perspectives — which are mostly, but not exclusively, commissioned by the editorial team — provide critical, forward-looking overviews of current topics. A stated editorial goal is to bridge the gap between subfields within materials science and related disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology and engineering (source: nature.com/natrevmats/aims).

Research areas covered in the journal include:

• Soft matter
• Biomaterials, bio-inspired and biomedical materials
• Optical, photonic and optoelectronic materials
• Magnetic materials
• Materials for electronics
• Superconductors
• Engineered and structural materials (metals, alloys, ceramics, composites)
• Two-dimensional materials
• Surfaces and thin films
• Devices
• Catalytic and separation materials
• Energy materials
• Materials for sustainable development
• Nanotechnology
• Modelling, simulation and materials theory
• Synthesis, processing and characterization techniques
• Manufacturing of materials

(source: nature.com/natrevmats/aims)

Article Types and Editorial Process

Nature Reviews Materials publishes four main content types, defined on the journal's information page (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information):

1. Reviews. Intended as balanced, objective analyses of a selected topic — describing the relevant scientific literature in terms accessible to recent graduates in any materials-science-related discipline, while also informing principal investigators and industry-based research scientists of the latest advances. Reviews are expected to include the authors' insight into future directions and their opinion of the major challenges facing researchers in the field.
2. Perspectives. A more personal format: they may take a distinctive viewpoint on a topic, explain its historical background, or discuss social, ethical or environmental factors relating to materials science research in academia and industry.
3. Comments. Short, authoritative pieces addressing topical issues in materials science or offering an opinion on a scientific area within the field.
4. Research Highlights. Written by the editors, these spotlight selected papers from the primary research literature.

Commissioning model. Reviews, Perspectives and Comments are commissioned by the editorial team — authors cannot simply submit a review proposal uninvited in the usual way. However, the aims page notes that reviews and perspectives are "mostly, but not only" commissioned, leaving room for independently submitted proposals that the editors judge timely (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information; nature.com/natrevmats/aims).

Editorial input and production. The journal's reviews are "commissioned and enhanced by the editorial team and produced with high-quality graphics drawn by dedicated art editors," with the aim of providing both an informative introduction for materials scientists embarking on a new topic and thought-provoking, in-depth analysis for seasoned researchers (source: nature.com/articles/natrevmats20151).

Speed. The journal publishes its own speed metrics: the median time from submission to first editorial decision is 10 days, and the median time from submission to acceptance is 184 days (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

AI policy. Nature Reviews journals disclose that they occasionally use internal Springer Nature-developed AI tools to support the generation of accessory content such as summary points; these are always edited and fact-checked by the author and/or editor. Any substantive use of AI beyond accessory content is declared on an individual article basis (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

Impact and Metrics

The following metrics are published on Nature Reviews Materials' official journal metrics page (nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact, accessed October 2026). Years refer to the metric year as displayed by the journal.

Historical note: The 2024 Journal Impact Factor (published in Clarivate's JCR 2024 release) was approximately 86.2, with a 5-year IF of 99.8 — so the two-year IF dipped slightly while the five-year IF rose substantially year on year. As with all review journals, the Impact Factor is calculated over a small number of highly cited citable items, so it moves with citation dynamics rather than editorial policy; Springer Nature is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and cautions that citation measures such as the 2-year Impact Factor are not necessarily measures of journal quality. Readers should check the current figures on the official metrics page, as they are updated annually (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact; archived metrics page crawl showing 2024 figures).

The journal's 2025 Article Influence Score of 28.217 — roughly analogous to a per-article measure of citation influence — underscores how heavily the journal's reviews are used as reference points: the editors report more than 200,000 citations to the 640 review and opinion pieces published in the journal's first decade (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4).

Submission Guidelines

Nature Reviews Materials works with a commissioning model, so the path to publication differs from a standard research journal. Key points from the journal's official pages (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information; nature.com/natrevmats/aims):

• Commissioning: Reviews, Perspectives and Comments are commissioned by the editorial team. If you are not contacted by an editor, you can approach the team with a synopsis of a proposed review topic; the aims page notes that content is "mostly, but not only" commissioned, so exceptional unsolicited proposals are considered.
• Authoritative, forward-looking content: Commissioned Reviews must be balanced and objective, give insight into future directions, and state the major challenges in the field. Perspectives can take a more personal or historical view, including social, ethical and environmental dimensions.
• Readership: Reviews should be accessible to recent graduates in any materials-science-related discipline while remaining informative for principal investigators and industry-based research scientists.
• Production: Accepted articles are developed with the editorial team and illustrated with high-quality graphics prepared by dedicated art editors — figure quality is a distinctive feature of the journal's output.
• Citation format: Cite articles as Nat. Rev. Mater. Vol, Article number (20XX), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41578-... — volume 1 corresponds to 2016.
• Preprints: As with other Nature Portfolio journals, the journal's preprints policy follows the publisher's general editorial policies; prospective authors should check the journal's policies page for the current position on preprints and overlapping manuscripts.

Prospective authors should contact the relevant subject editor (listed on the journal's editors page) with a concise proposal before drafting a full manuscript, as unsolicited full submissions are unlikely to be considered without prior editorial agreement.

Open Access and APC

Nature Reviews Materials is a subscription-based journal: it is online-only and its content is sold through individual and institutional subscriptions (the journal's subscribe page lists a "Nature+" monthly subscription option and institutional licensing). This is distinct from the fully open-access Nature Portfolio titles.

The journal does not publish a journal-specific article processing charge on its official pages. Springer Nature operates open access funding and support programmes, including institutional open access agreements that can cover publishing costs for authors at participating institutions, and waiver/discount policies for authors in qualifying circumstances. Because no journal-level APC figure for Nature Reviews Materials is publicly disclosed by the publisher, prospective authors should verify current open access options and any applicable charges on Springer Nature's official open access support pages or by contacting the journal directly — and should not rely on third-party aggregator figures, which may be outdated or estimated (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information; nature.com/natrevmats/subscribe).

Notable Content and Collections

Over its first decade, Nature Reviews Materials' most-used articles have been its broad-scope reviews on energy materials, two-dimensional materials and biomaterials, alongside its opinion formats. The journal's own retrospective highlights several milestones (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4):

• The launch issue (January 2016): reviews on the computational design of energy materials, hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites for photovoltaics, pro-angiogenic biomaterials, superhydrophobic and icephobic surfaces, and atomically precise fabrication of carbon nanostructures — plus a Comment on the role of materials in a sustainable future.
• The plastics Collection (early 2022): influential enough that two articles were cited in reports by the OECD and the World Health Organization — a rare example of review-journal content feeding directly into international policy.
• The materials circularity Series: a recent editorial initiative bringing together diverse expertise to frame materials innovations within regulatory, economic and social realities.
• Research Highlights: short editorial pieces spotlighting notable primary-literature papers, providing a curated window on fast-moving topics between full reviews.

The shift in dominant topics between the 2016 and 2025 volumes — toward battery materials, solar technologies, nanomedicine and sustainability — offers a concise map of where materials science itself has moved in the journal's first decade (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4).

The Nature Reviews Portfolio Family

Nature Reviews Materials belongs to the Nature Reviews portfolio of journals within Nature Portfolio — a family of review journals covering the life, clinical, physical and social sciences, including titles such as Nature Reviews Physics (whose launch team was headed in 2018 by Giulia Pacchioni, the current chief editor of Nature Reviews Materials) and Nature Reviews Chemistry. The portfolio shares production standards, a commissioning-based editorial model, and the cross-journal editorial team described above (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information; nature.com/natrevmats/editors).

Its sister research journal, Nature Materials, publishes original research across materials science and engineering — commissioned reviews and primary research being deliberately split between the two titles. Manuscripts better suited to primary research may be directed toward Nature Materials or other Nature Portfolio research journals, while the Reviews titles concentrate on synthesis, perspective and opinion (sources: nature.com/nmat/aims; nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Nature Reviews Materials?

Nature Reviews Materials is an online-only, subscription-based review journal published by Springer Nature. Launched in 2016, it publishes authoritative Reviews, Perspectives and Comments across all of materials science — the making, measuring, modelling and manufacturing of materials — with the aim of distilling the fast-growing primary literature into curated, forward-looking overviews (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

When was Nature Reviews Materials founded?

The journal launched in January 2016, with an introductory editorial titled "Materials in our time." It was the first Nature Reviews title in the physical sciences, founded by chief editor Ali Stoddart (source: nature.com/articles/natrevmats20151).

What is the impact factor of Nature Reviews Materials?

According to the journal's official metrics page, the Journal Impact Factor is 83.3 (2025), with a 5-year Impact Factor of 110.4 (2025). The 2024 Impact Factor was approximately 86.2. Figures are updated annually — check nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact for the current values.

Who is the Chief Editor of Nature Reviews Materials?

Dr. Giulia Pacchioni has been Chief Editor since January 2022. She holds a PhD in physics (EPFL, Lausanne), joined Springer Nature in October 2015 for the journal's launch, and headed the 2018 launch team of Nature Reviews Physics before taking the chief editorship (source: nature.com/natrevmats/editors).

Who founded Nature Reviews Materials?

Ali Stoddart was the founding chief editor in 2016. She later led the launch of Nature Synthesis in 2022 and returned to Nature Materials as chief editor in July 2024 (source: nature.com/nmat/editors).

How can I publish a review in Nature Reviews Materials?

Reviews, Perspectives and Comments are commissioned by the editorial team. Authors who have not been approached can contact the relevant subject editor with a concise proposal/synopsis — the journal's aims page notes content is "mostly, but not only" commissioned. Unsolicited full manuscripts are unlikely to be considered without prior editorial agreement (sources: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information; nature.com/natrevmats/aims).

Is Nature Reviews Materials open access?

No — it is a subscription-based journal. The publisher does not publish a journal-specific APC for it, so authors should verify open access options and any charges on Springer Nature's official open access pages or by contacting the journal.

What is the abbreviation of Nature Reviews Materials?

The journal's official citation abbreviation is Nat. Rev. Mater., and articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.1038/s41578 (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

How long does review take at Nature Reviews Materials?

The journal's published speed metrics report a median of 10 days from submission to first editorial decision and 184 days from submission to acceptance (source: nature.com/natrevmats/journal-impact, 2025 figures).

What is the difference between Nature Reviews Materials and Nature Materials?

Nature Materials is a monthly research journal publishing original research papers in materials science and engineering; Nature Reviews Materials is its sister review title, publishing commissioned Reviews, Perspectives, Comments and Research Highlights rather than primary research (sources: nature.com/nmat/aims; nature.com/natrevmats/journal-information).

How many articles has the journal published?

In its first decade (2016–2025), the journal published 488 Reviews and Perspectives plus 152 opinion pieces, cumulatively cited more than 200,000 times (source: nature.com/articles/s41578-025-00881-4, published 9 January 2026).

Where can I find more about the journal?

On the journal's official pages at nature.com/natrevmats/ — the journal-information, aims, editors and journal-impact pages carry the authoritative descriptions, editorial bios and current metrics used in this profile.

Profile compiled October 2026 from official Nature and Springer Nature sources listed below. Metrics and policies change over time — always verify current figures on the journal's official pages before citing or acting on them.