ACS Materials Letters

After two months of review, my paper in the AM series was rejected. The reviewers' comments were completely off the mark, but my boss kept emphasizing his belief in the quality of my work and told me not to be discouraged. Graduation is imminent, and although I already have a paper in a Tier 1 journal, I still feel that as a chemistry graduate student, it is not perfect without a paper in an ACS journal. So, I gathered my spirits and reorganized my thoughts, rewriting the entire article. I felt that the innovation was highlighted once again.

After my boss read it, he suggested choosing between ACS Nano and ACS Materials Letters. After reading the journal profiles, I felt that Nano is more established but has limited space. ACS Materials Letters is positioned as the flagship journal for ACS materials and is known for its rapid publication. I decided to give it a try. I was delighted to receive the editor's approval, and the review process took about a little over a month, which was acceptable. There were three reviewers, all very professional, and their questions were on point. They all gave evaluations in the top 15%. I felt that ACS Materials Letters has high requirements for the novelty of the article and maintains a high quality standard, which aligns with the journal's materials focus. I heard that the real-time impact factor has already exceeded 15, indicating its potential. I will definitely consider submitting to it again if I have good work in the future.

The head of the research group said that ACS Materials Letters is on par with AM, so I submitted what I thought was a very good work to ACS Materials Letters. The process was quite complicated, but in the end, it got accepted. The impact factor for this year is only 8.3, which is much lower than expected. I feel like I made a bit of a loss by submitting it there. My boss consoled me by saying that ACS journals have high quality and will be recognized for funding applications in the future. Well, I can only console myself like this. I hope ACS Materials Letters will further improve, at least to be on par with AFM. Otherwise, I will truly feel frustrated.