Dear Readers,

As usual we would like to take this opportunity and look back at what Advanced Engineering Materials has achieved in the last year. And what a year this has been! The way we work and live has changed dramatically by the pandemic. Universities and institutes were closed, conferences were cancelled, postponed or took place virtually only and a variety of other challenges made research and publishing different.

Despite all the challenges in 2020, Advanced Engineering Materials published exciting research on engineering materials. We are excited to report that the journal's Impact Factor has grown for the sixth time in a row to a record of 3.217 (2019 Clarivate Journal Citation Reports). Table 1 shows the five articles most cited in 2019 that are contributing to this excellent result. The reviews listed here show a variety of topics and reflect the broad scope of the journal: Soft robotics, additive manufacturing and 3D printing, energy harvesting and storage as well as colorimetric sensing assays. Other topics among the highly cited article in 2019 are SiBCN ceramics, nanoporous metals, TiAl‐based alloys, anode materials for Lithium‐ion batteries as well as manufacturing of bioinspired structural materials.

Launched in 2019, the Advanced Engineering Materials Hall of Fame continues to provide a collection of excellent invited review articles that highlight the work of top scientists in the field of engineering materials. The virtual issue includes reviews on high‐entropy alloys, severe plastic deformation of metals, ceramic processing methods, hybrid nanocrystalline alloys by high pressure torsion and shape memory alloys. These articles are expected to contribute significantly to the next Impact Factors.

In addition to citation based metrics such as the Impact Factor, the Altmetric Score is a measure for the scientific impact of an article. Table 2 shows the articles that are most frequently discussed and shared on social media in 2020. Also here, a variety of topics is presented, including advanced manufacturing methods and deep learning.

Advanced Engineering Materials had many beautiful covers in 2020. Not only front and back covers, but also inside front/back covers presented the author's research in artistic and creative images. (Figure 1).

The success of the journal is also reflected by the high number of submissions and the steadily growing usage. Open Access publications are also growing fast – until 2019 AEM published only occasionally Online Open articles, in 2020 roughly 20% of the published articles were published Online Open. This is mainly due to open access agreements e.g. for German, Austrian and Hungarian authors.

In 2020 several Special Sections and Special Issues have been published: The first issue was a Special Issue dedicated to Terence G. Langdon on the occasion of his 80^th Birthday which was guest‐edited by Megumi Kawasaki, Roberto B. Figueiredo and Alexander P. Zhilyaev. A Special Section was devoted to “Multi‐Functional Filters for Metal Melt Filtration” (Guest Editors: Christos Aneziris and Tobias Fey). Another Special Section was guest‐edited by Olivier Guillon and was devoted to research at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich. A complete issue was devoted to “Materials Science and Engineering at Friedrich‐Alexander University of Erlangen‐Nürnberg (FAU)”, this Special Issue was guest‐edited by Aldo Boccaccini, Mathias Göken and Nahum Travitzky. Alexander P. Zhilyaev, Ruslan Z. Valiev and Terence G. Langdon guest‐edited a Special Section on “Ultrafine‐Grained Metallic Materials and Coatings” and last, but not least a Special Section guest‐edited by Dirk Lehmhus, Nikhil Gupta, Jonathan Spowart and Eric Jaegle on “Additive Manufacturing of Composites and Complex Materials” was included in Issue 12. At this point we would like to thank all guest‐editors for their support and enthusiasm dedicated to these projects. We also encourage our authors, readers, and reviewers to contact us for new ideas for special issues.

In November 2020 the sad news arrived that Alexander Zhilyaev from Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University passed away. He was an esteemed author, reviewer and guest‐editor of two recent projects.

Towards the end of last year, we simplified the submission and transfer process for authors. The Advanced journal family and most of its sister journals now have a single concise set of article types. The most notable change is the discontinuation of the article types “Communication” and “Full Paper”, which are replaced by “Research Article” and can contain original research studies of any length. More information on the article types can be found in our author guidelines.

We believe this is a significant step towards making life easier for our authors, readers and reviewers as it greatly reduces the need for formatting in general and reformatting after transfer to a sister journal. It also brings us one step closer to free‐format submissions. This initiative is part of a global project across Wiley and you will see similar changes to Wiley's complete portfolio of journals. It underlines the efforts Wiley is undertaking to make life easier when preparing, submitting, and reading manuscripts.

As a direct result of the increased success of the journal number of submissions and impact factor our team was reinforced with two new editors: Shaoying Cui, who is also editor for Engineering Reports and Journal of Applied Polymer Science, is located in our office in Shanghai; and Valentina Lombardo, who is an editor for Advanced Materials, Small, and Advanced Materials Technologies, is located in the Weinheim office. See here for the full team of editors working for Advanced Engineering Materials.

We also would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the continuous support from our board members, authors, reviewers and readers. We look forward to another exciting new year in materials research and wish you a happy, healthy and successful 2021 that will hopefully not be clouded by the global pandemic.

On behalf of the Editorial Team,

Sandra Kalveram

Editor‐in‐Chief

Jolke Perelaer

Deputy Editor

尊敬的读者，

与往常一样，我们想借此机会回顾一下先进工程材料公司在去年取得的成就。这是多大的一年！大流行使我们的工作和生活方式发生了巨大变化。大学和学院关闭，会议实际上只是被取消，推迟或举行，而其他各种挑战使研究和出版有所不同。

尽管存在2020年的所有挑战，但高级工程材料公司发表了有关工程材料的令人兴奋的研究报告。我们很高兴地报告说，该期刊的影响因子已连续第六次增长至3.217的记录（2019 Clarivate Journal引文报告）。表 图1显示了2019年最常被引用的五篇文章，这些文章都为这一出色的结果做出了贡献。此处列出的评论显示了各种主题，并反映了该期刊的广泛范围：软机器人，增材制造和3D打印，能量收集和存储以及比色传感分析。2019年被高引用的文章中的其他主题是SiBCN陶瓷，纳米多孔金属，TiAl基合金，锂离子电池负极材料以及受生物启发的结构材料的制造。

先进工程材料名人堂于2019年启动，继续提供一系列优秀的受邀评论文章，重点介绍工程材料领域顶尖科学家的工作。虚拟问题包括对高熵合金，金属的严重塑性变形，陶瓷加工方法，高压扭转混合纳米晶合金和形状记忆合金的评论。预计这些文章将为下一个影响因素做出重大贡献。

除了基于引用的度量标准（例如影响因子）之外，Altmetric得分还可以衡量文章的科学影响力。表 2显示了2020年在社交媒体上最常讨论和共享的文章。此外，在此还介绍了各种主题，包括先进的制造方法和深度学习。

2020年，Advanced Engineering Materials拥有许多精美的封面。不仅封面和封底，而且封面/封底内部都展示了作者对艺术和创意图像的研究。（图 1）。

期刊的成功还体现在大量的投稿和稳步增长的使用量上。开放获取出版物的增长也很快-直到2019年AEM仅偶尔发布在线开放文章，到2020年，大约20％的已发布文章在线发布。这主要是由于开放访问协议，例如针对德国，奥地利和匈牙利作者的开放访问协议。

2020年一些特殊路段和特殊问题已经公布：第一个问题是一个特别问题，致力于特伦斯G.兰登在他80之际，^日生日由川崎惠，Roberto B. Figueiredo和Alexander P. Zhilyaev共同编辑。特别节专门讨论了“用于金属熔体过滤的多功能过滤器”（来宾编辑：Christos Aneziris和Tobias Fey）。另一个特别小组由奥利维尔·古永（Olivier Guillon）客座编辑，专门研究了朱利希（ForschungszentrumJülich）能源与气候研究所的研究。完整的一期专着《埃尔兰根-纽伦堡的弗里德里希-亚历山大大学的材料科学与工程》（FAU），由Aldo Boccaccini，MathiasGöken和Nahum Travitzky客座编辑。Alexander P. Zhilyaev，Ruslan Z. Valiev和Terence G. Langdon客座编辑了“超细粒金属材料和涂层”特别部分，最后但并非最不重要的是由Dirk Lehmhus，Nikhil Gupta亲自编辑的特别部分，乔纳森·斯波瓦特（Jonathan Spowart）和埃里克·杰格（Eric Jaegle）的“复合材料和复合材料的增材制造”已列入第12期。在这一点上，我们要感谢所有来宾编辑对这些项目的支持和热情。我们还鼓励作者，读者和审稿人与我们联系，以寻求有关特殊问题的新想法。

2020年11月，一个令人难过的消息传来，来自Nosov Magnitogorsk国立技术大学的Alexander Zhilyaev去世了。他是最近两个项目的著名作者，审稿人和客座编辑。

去年年底，我们简化了作者的提交和转让过程。现在，高级期刊家族及其大多数姊妹期刊都具有一套简洁的文章类型。最显着的变化是取消了“通讯”和“全文”这两种文章类型，这些文章类型被“研究性文章”替代，并且可以包含任何长度的原始研究。有关文章类型的更多信息，请参见我们的作者指南。

我们认为，这是朝着使我们的作者，读者和审阅者更轻松的生活迈出的重要一步，因为它极大地减少了在转载为姊妹期刊后对常规格式和重新格式化的需求。这也使我们更接近自由格式提交。该计划是Wiley全球项目的一部分，您将看到与Wiley完整期刊组合类似的变化。它突显了Wiley在准备，提交和阅读手稿时为简化生活所做的努力。

由于期刊投稿数量和影响因子的成功获得成功的直接结果，我们的团队得到了两名新编辑的支持：崔少英（同时也是《工程报告》和《应用高分子科学杂志》的编辑）位于我们的上海办公室; Valentina Lombardo是Weinheim办公室的一员，他是Advanced Materials，Small和Advanced Materials Technologies的编辑。请参见此处，了解从事高级工程材料的完整编辑团队。

我们也想借此机会感谢董事会成员，作者，审阅者和读者的不断支持。我们期待着材料研究又一个令人兴奋的新的一年，并祝您2021年快乐，健康，成功，并且希望不会被全球大流行所笼罩。

代表编辑团队，

桑德拉·卡尔维拉姆（Sandra Kalveram）

主编辑

乔尔克·佩雷尔

副编辑