Superconductor Science and Technology

About Superconductor Science and Technology

About Superconductor Science and Technology

Superconductor Science and Technology (ISO 4 abbreviation: Supercond. Sci. Technol.) is a monthly international peer-reviewed journal devoted to every aspect of superconductivity — from the theory of superconductors and novel devices to the fabrication and properties of thin films, wires, tapes, and bulk materials. Published by IOP Publishing (United Kingdom) since 1988, it is the principal specialty journal for the global superconductivity research community, spanning physics, materials science, and electrical engineering. IOP Publishing describes it as "a truly multidisciplinary journal providing an essential forum for members of the superconductivity research community." OpenAlex indexes roughly 9,900 works published in the journal, which together have attracted more than 200,000 citations (OpenAlex, accessed October 2026).

The journal carries the print ISSN 0953-2048 and the web ISSN 1361-6668 (CODEN: SUSTEF). Its official IOPscience journal page currently reports a Journal Impact Factor of 3.4 and a CiteScore of 6.4, with a median 43 days to first decision after peer review — figures that place it firmly in the top tier of applied-physics and materials journals. It is a hybrid open-access title: subscription publication is free of charge, while authors may pay a published article processing charge for immediate open access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

This in-depth profile gathers verified facts about the journal — its history since 1988, editorial leadership, aims and scope, indexing, citation metrics (each labeled with its source and year), landmark papers with DOI-verified links, open-access charges, and practical submission guidance — so researchers can assess its fit for their work and readers can understand its role in the field.

A note on currency: journal metrics, editorial mastheads, and article charges change over time. Every figure in this profile is labeled with its source and the year of the measurement as reported in October 2026; readers making submission or subscription decisions should confirm current values on the journal's official IOPscience pages, which remain the authoritative reference.

Key Facts

• Full title: Superconductor Science and Technology
• Abbreviation (ISO 4): Supercond. Sci. Technol.
• Publisher: IOP Publishing Ltd. (United Kingdom)
• Founded: 1988 — publishing continuously ever since
• Frequency: Monthly (12 issues per year)
• ISSN (print): 0953-2048 · ISSN (web): 1361-6668
• CODEN: SUSTEF · OCLC: 664561486 · LCCN: 88651712
• Editor-in-Chief: Cathy P. Foley (CSIRO, Australia) — per Wikipedia's journal article; readers should confirm on IOPscience's current Editorial Board page
• Language: English
• Open access model: Hybrid — subscription by default, optional paid open access
• Indexed in: Science Citation Index Expanded (Web of Science), Scopus, Current Contents / Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, Inspec, Chemical Abstracts, Ei Compendex, EBSCO databases

History: Documenting the Superconductivity Revolutions Since 1988

Superconductor Science and Technology was founded in 1988, at one of the most dramatic moments in the history of condensed-matter physics: the high-temperature superconductivity revolution ignited by Bednorz and Müller's 1986 discovery in cuprates and the subsequent 1987 breakthroughs above liquid-nitrogen temperature. The new journal gave the exploding field a dedicated archival home, and its earliest volumes — beginning with volume 1 in 1988 — captured the intense first wave of cuprate research, including theoretical contributions such as Zhang, Gros, and Rice's 1988 renormalised-Hamiltonian treatment of the resonant-valence-bond wavefunction (volume 1, issue 1).

Through the 1990s the journal tracked the maturation of high-temperature superconductor technology: the development of melt-processed rare-earth barium copper oxide bulks (notably Murakami and colleagues' influential 1996 review), advances in thin-film growth, and the fundamental physics of vortex matter and flux dynamics — exemplified by Kes, Aarts, and van den Berg's 1989 paper on thermally assisted flux flow. The turn of the millennium brought the magnesium diboride surprise of 2001, which the journal covered authoritatively through Buzea and Yamashita's widely cited review of the superconducting properties of MgB₂, and the steady industrialization of coated-conductor (REBCO) tapes.

In the 2010s and 2020s the journal's scope expanded with the field itself: iron-based superconductors, superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (Natarajan, Tanner, and Hadfield's 2012 review remains among its most cited), superconducting quantum devices, fault-current limiters for power grids, and record trapped-field bulk magnets — including the 2014 report of a 17.6-tesla trapped field in melt-processed Gd-Ba-Cu-O reinforced with shrink-fit steel, then a world record. Across nearly four decades the journal has thus served as the continuous archival record of superconductivity's journey from laboratory curiosity to enabling technology for MRI, particle accelerators, fusion magnets, and quantum information.

Aims & Scope

IOP Publishing's official scope for the journal covers "all aspects of superconductivity." In detail, the journal publishes research on:

• Theories of superconductivity: microscopic and phenomenological theories, unconventional pairing mechanisms, and the physics of novel superconducting materials including cuprates, iron-based compounds, MgB₂, and hydrides.
• Basic physics of superconductors: vortex matter and flux dynamics, critical currents and pinning, electronic structure, and the interplay of superconductivity with magnetism and other orders.
• Microstructure and growth: the relation of microstructure, crystal growth, and processing to superconducting properties in bulks, films, wires, and tapes.
• Thin films and devices: fabrication and properties of superconducting thin films, Josephson junctions, SQUIDs, single-photon detectors, and quantum circuits.
• Theory of novel devices: device concepts and modeling for superconducting electronics, power applications, and magnets.
• Large-scale applications: superconducting magnets, cables, fault-current limiters, motors and generators, and materials for fusion and accelerators.

OpenAlex topic analysis of the journal's corpus confirms this breadth: the dominant topics among its roughly 9,900 indexed works are Superconducting Materials and Applications, Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism, Superconducting and THz Device Technology, Superconductivity in MgB₂ and Alloys, and Iron-based superconductors research (OpenAlex, October 2026).

Article Types

The journal publishes three main article categories: Papers — regular articles reporting original research in superconductivity and its applications, without formal length restrictions; Letters — short articles reporting very substantial new advances, limited to about five journal pages or 4,500 words including figures; and Topical Reviews — review articles commissioned by the editors. Special issues and conference collections appear periodically under guest editorship.

Editorial Leadership

The journal is headed by an Editor-in-Chief supported by an international editorial board of subject experts. Wikipedia's article on the journal names Cathy P. Foley of CSIRO (Australia's national science agency) as editor-in-chief. Because editorial terms rotate and third-party listings can lag, authors and readers should verify the current masthead on IOPscience's Editorial Board page for the journal before citing it in formal contexts.

Indexing and Abstracting

Superconductor Science and Technology is abstracted and indexed in the principal scholarly databases, securing its visibility to physicists, materials scientists, and engineers:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) — Web of Science Core Collection (Clarivate)
• Current Contents / Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences — Clarivate
• Scopus — Elsevier (continuous coverage since 1988)
• Inspec — IET
• Chemical Abstracts (CAS)
• Ei Compendex (Engineering Village)
• EBSCO databases

Journal Metrics (Each Labeled with Source and Year)

Metrics describe the journal's citation footprint, not the merit of any individual paper. Each figure below is labeled with its source and year, since databases compute these indicators differently and values shift with each annual release.

• Journal Impact Factor (JIF): 3.4 — as displayed on the official IOPscience journal page (current, 2026) and reported by Wikipedia as the 2025 Journal Citation Reports figure via Clarivate.
• CiteScore: 6.4 — as displayed on the official IOPscience journal page (Scopus-derived, current).
• SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 1.095 — Scopus/SCImago data (recent year); the journal is ranked Q1 in its Scopus categories, including Ceramics and Composites, Condensed Matter Physics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry, and Metals and Alloys.
• h-index: 124 — Scopus-based tracker (coverage 1988–2025); OpenAlex's broader corpus computes an h-index of 140 across roughly 9,900 indexed works (October 2026). The difference reflects database coverage, not error.
• Median time to first decision: 43 days — as displayed on the official IOPscience journal page.
• Scopus impact score: 3.96 — Scopus cites-per-document (2-year) tracker (2025 update), a different construction from the Clarivate impact factor.

Landmark Papers

The following highly cited articles, all published in Superconductor Science and Technology, have shaped superconductivity research and technology. Each DOI was verified as resolving to the stated journal via the Crossref API (checked October 2026); citation counts are from OpenAlex and are rounded.

• Buzea, C. & Yamashita, T. — "Review of the superconducting properties of MgB₂" (2001). The definitive early review of magnesium diboride after its surprise 39-K discovery — crystal structure, electronic properties, and thin-film prospects. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/14/11/201 · cited ~1,220 times.
• Natarajan, C. M., Tanner, M. G. & Hadfield, R. H. — "Superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors: physics and applications" (2012). A landmark review that consolidated the SNSPD field as the technology moved into quantum optics and quantum communication. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/25/6/063001 · cited ~970 times.
• Kes, P. H., Aarts, J., van den Berg, J. et al. — "Thermally assisted flux flow at small driving forces" (1989). A foundational study of vortex creep and dissipation in high-temperature superconductors that informed decades of pinning research. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/1/5/005 · cited ~570 times.
• Durrell, J. H., Dennis, A. R., Jaroszyński, J. et al. — "A trapped field of 17.6 T in melt-processed, bulk Gd-Ba-Cu-O reinforced with shrink-fit steel" (2014). Reported a then-world-record trapped magnetic field in a bulk superconductor, demonstrating the maturity of reinforced bulk-magnet engineering. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/27/8/082001 · cited ~565 times.
• Hong, Z., Campbell, A. M. & Coombs, T. A. — "Numerical solution of critical state in superconductivity by finite element software" (2006). Made critical-state (Bean-model) computation accessible through standard finite-element tools — a widely adopted method in applied superconductivity design. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/19/12/004 · cited ~550 times.
• Noë, M. & Steurer, M. — "High-temperature superconductor fault current limiters: concepts, applications, and development status" (2007). The standard review of resistive and inductive superconducting fault-current limiters for power grids. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/20/3/r01 · cited ~520 times.
• Murakami, M., Sakai, N., Higuchi, T. & Yoo, S. I. — "Melt-processed light rare earth element–Ba–Cu–O" (1996). A key early review of melt-textured REBCO bulk superconductors that underpinned the trapped-field magnet technology of the following decades. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/9/12/001 · cited ~610 times.
• Zhang, F. C., Gros, C. & Rice, T. M. — "A renormalised Hamiltonian approach to a resonant valence bond wavefunction" (1988). Published in the journal's inaugural volume, this theoretical contribution exemplifies the title's founding mission to cover theories of superconductivity alongside materials and devices. DOI: 10.1088/0953-2048/1/1/009 · cited ~560 times.

The Journal's Role in Emerging Superconducting Technologies

Beyond archival research, the journal functions as a technology-watch venue for superconductivity's expanding applications. Recent coverage on its pages has included superconducting power cables — including hybrid cable concepts in which electricity transport is combined with chemical energy carriers such as liquid hydrogen, with demonstration projects showing that superconducting cables can meet all technical requirements for such service — as well as high-field magnet programs for fusion energy, next-generation particle accelerators, and medical imaging. The journal's topical reviews, commissioned by the editors, periodically synthesize fast-moving subfields — from high-throughput materials discovery and machine learning for superconductors to the industrialization of coated conductors — giving practitioners consolidated entry points. This combination of fundamental papers, device research, and commissioned synthesis is what makes the title, in IOP's words, an "essential forum" rather than merely a repository: it is where the community negotiates what counts as progress.

Why Researchers Choose This Journal

For superconductivity researchers, the journal offers several practical advantages. It is the only major monthly journal dedicated exclusively to superconductivity, so papers reach a concentrated, expert readership rather than competing for attention in general physics titles. Its hybrid model means subscription-route publication is entirely free — "there are no other charges" — which matters for groups without dedicated publication funds, while the published APC route and transformative agreements serve authors with open-access mandates. The median 43-day first decision is competitive for the field, and the commissioned Topical Review track gives established researchers a visible platform for field-defining syntheses. Finally, with nearly four decades of continuous publication and indexing in both Web of Science and Scopus since 1988, the journal's archive is one of the most complete records of the high-temperature-superconductivity era anywhere.

Open Access and Article Processing Charges

Superconductor Science and Technology is a hybrid open-access journal. IOP Publishing's official "About" page for the journal states the policy plainly: publication on a subscription-access basis is free of charge, and authors may instead pay an article publication charge to publish open access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

• Subscription route: free — "There are no other charges for publishing in Superconductor Science and Technology" (IOP Publishing Support, journal "About" page).
• Open-access APC: £2,530 / €2,905 / US$3,490 (excluding VAT where applicable), per IOP Publishing Support's official pricing page for the journal. APCs apply only to accepted articles; there are no submission charges.
• Discounts and waivers: authors from many lower- and middle-income countries are eligible for discounted APCs, applied automatically; referees and various funding arrangements may also reduce the charge.
• Transformative agreements: the journal is included in IOP Publishing's transformative (read-and-publish) agreements, allowing authors at participating institutions to publish open access without paying the APC directly.

Green open access (repository deposit of the accepted manuscript) is available under IOP's author-rights policies; authors with funder mandates should check the embargo and licensing terms on IOP's author-rights page.

Submission Information

• Where to submit: manuscripts are submitted through IOPscience's online submission system (ScholarOne Manuscripts), reached via the "Submit an article" link on the journal's IOPscience homepage.
• Author guidelines: the journal's IOPscience page provides author guidelines, LaTeX and Word templates, figure-preparation standards, and reference-style requirements — authors should prepare manuscripts to IOP's specifications before submission.
• Article types: Papers (no formal length restriction), Letters (very substantial advances, ≤5 journal pages / 4,500 words), and commissioned Topical Reviews. Choosing the wrong article type is a common cause of editorial delay.
• Peer review: IOP's standard peer-review process managed by the editorial board; the journal reports a median of 43 days to first decision.
• What the editors look for: original, significant advances across superconductivity science and technology with clear novelty over prior work, adequate characterization and reproducibility information, and fit to the scope above. Incremental results without new physical insight are the most common reason for rejection.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Superconductor Science and Technology a reputable journal?
Yes. Published by IOP Publishing since 1988, indexed in SCIE and Scopus, Q1 in its Scopus categories, and the dedicated archival journal of the superconductivity community, it is the standard venue for applied and fundamental superconductivity research.

What is the impact factor of Superconductor Science and Technology?
3.4, as displayed on the journal's official IOPscience page and in the 2025 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate). Its Scopus CiteScore is 6.4.

Who is the editor-in-chief?
Cathy P. Foley of CSIRO, per Wikipedia's journal article. Confirm the current masthead on IOPscience's Editorial Board page for formal citation.

How much does it cost to publish?
Subscription-route publication is free with no other charges. The optional open-access APC is £2,530 / €2,905 / US$3,490, with discounts for eligible authors and transformative-agreement coverage at participating institutions.

Is the journal open access?
It is hybrid: subscription by default, with a paid CC BY open-access option. Accepted manuscripts can also be deposited in repositories under IOP's green open-access policy.

How long does peer review take?
The journal reports a median of 43 days to first decision after peer review (IOPscience).

What article types does it publish?
Papers (no formal length limit), Letters (≤5 journal pages / 4,500 words, for very substantial advances), and commissioned Topical Reviews.

What are the journal's ISSNs?
Print: 0953-2048; web: 1361-6668. CODEN: SUSTEF.

What is the journal's acceptance rate?
IOP Publishing does not publish an official acceptance rate for this title; figures quoted on third-party sites are estimates, not official.

Where do I submit a manuscript?
Through IOPscience's online submission system (ScholarOne), via the "Submit an article" link on the journal's IOPscience homepage.

Does the journal cover superconducting quantum devices?
Yes — superconducting electronics, quantum circuits, and single-photon detectors are core scope areas, and the journal's highly cited SNSPD review is evidence of its standing in that community.

Is the journal indexed in Web of Science?
Yes — in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), as well as Scopus, Inspec, Chemical Abstracts, and Ei Compendex.

Can I publish a review article?
Topical Reviews are commissioned by the editors; unsolicited review proposals should be directed to the editorial office before submission.