Abstract
6 min readIn the traditional Western culture, the first anniversary of marriage was referred to as a paper anniversary: paper is the top gift for the first-anniversary celebration. Time flies and it is now the time to celebrate the first-year birthday of Aggregate. The spotlight of this anniversary celebration is also papers, not the commodity papers sold in the markets but the research papers published in Aggregate. Since the first batch of research papers published in its inauguration issue at the end of last year, Aggregate has witnessed a challenging, thrilling yet fruitful year. Overcoming the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic on scientific research, Aggregate has made an exotic journey and reached a magnificent milestone. Aggregate was established to provide a new platform for high-quality, insightful and cutting-edge research in the field of aggregology study. Its scope is very broad, as anything above a single molecular species can in principle be deemed to be an aggregate. An aggregate can have different compositions, structures, morphologies, and so forth, being, for example, homogeneous or heterogeneous, organic or inorganic or hybrid, one- or two- or multi-dimensional, admixed or assembled, random or ordered, and amorphous or crystalline. Aggregate focuses on the science beyond molecules. It encourages people to break discipline boundaries and to explore the systems with greater complexity at higher levels of structural hierarchy. On its “paper anniversary”, we show our great respect to the high-quality papers published in Aggregate. From the last December, the journal has published seven issues including 52 reviews, 13 research articles, 2 editorials, 1 profile and 1 research highlight. The papers have been well received by the research community. Examples of the citation data for the papers published in Aggregate are shown in Table 1, with double-digit cites in a short period of time (<1 year). Some of the review articles have enjoyed high popularity among the readers, for they have built new conceptual frameworks through comprehensive summarization and rational generalization. A wide variety of research topics have been discussed, for example, nanoparticles, composites, polymers, perovskites, biomass, DNAs, proteins, hydrogels, aerogels, supramolecular assemblies, host–guest complexes, and covalent or metal–organic frameworks, with potential applications in solar cells, light-emitting diodes, nonlinear optics, chemosensing, bioimaging, theranostics, drug delivery, and so on. Novel and impactful works have been reported in the research articles regarding the design, synthesis, catalysis, working mechanism, device fabrication, and so forth. The large numbers of citations attracted by the papers published in Aggregate in a year manifest the hot activity and booming development in the area of aggregology research. We are pleased to present the Best Paper Awards to the authors listed in Table 1, whose articles have made big impacts on the aggregate science. Apart from the academic quality of the papers, I am also impressed by the esthetically appealing cover artworks in the issues published in the past year. In the recent “My Favorite Covers” online poll, the cover image designed by Dr. Yan Sun and Prof. Dr. Peter J. Stang is ranked No. 1 with an astonishingly high number of 47876 votes and thus wins the Best Cover Award of Aggregate (Figure 1). I also wish to congratulate the authors whose cover artworks have been ranked Nos. 2–3 and Nos. 4–5 for winning the Outstanding Cover Awards and Excellent Cover Awards, respectively. Thanks to the high quality of its published papers, Aggregate has been quickly included in the Directory of Open Access Journals and the Emerging Sources Citation Index. Its entrance into the Web of Science Core Collection indicates that it has been well recognized by the scientific research community. To closely communicate and promptly share the frontier research of aggregate science with the readers, we have been routinely posting the research papers published in Aggregate through popular social media platforms, such as Twitter (@AggregateOA) and WeChat (@Aggregate_2020). Multichannel onsite and online events (conferences, symposiums, forums, seminars, webinars, etc.) have been organized, which have attracted thousands of offline attendees and online viewers. We are very happy to see that people are actively participating in the events and activities organized by our journal. Critical questions were asked and hot issues were discussed at, for example, the onsite Aggregate X Angewandte Forum during the AIE20 International Conference held in Guangzhou on July 25–28, 2021 and the online global webinar on Aggregate Science in Metal Materials held on November 22, 2021. More than 224 thousand votes were casted and more than 633 thousand views were registered during the recent “My Favorite Covers” competition. With the great contributions from our authors and warm support from our readers, Aggregate has achieved remarkable growth with amazing performance since its debut at the end of last year. We will endeavor to make an even faster growth in the coming year. In Volume 3 of 2022, 6 issues with at least 60 articles and 24 cover artworks are scheduled. Two special issues are planned: active researchers are invited to contribute reviews and papers to Aggregate to honor Prof. Yongfang Li (the Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Prof. Paul Weiss (the University of California, Los Angeles) for their outstanding accomplishments in the areas of research on photovoltaics and nanoscience, respectively. We strive to make Aggregate a top-tier flagship journal for publishing discoveries and breakthroughs in aggregology research. Bearing this in mind, we will keep working hard to ensure effective peer review, high-quality publication and efficient dissemination to a broader spectrum of readership. Aggregate would have not come this far on the journey to excellence as a new journal and become what it is today without the collective effort of our authors, reviewers and editors and the enthusiastic support from our publisher (Wiley) and readers. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to the authors who have chosen Aggregate to publish their beautiful works and fascinating findings. Our reviewers have played a vital role in the quality control during the manuscript screening processes. They have safeguarded the high standards of Aggregate and assisted the authors to improve the quality of their submitted manuscripts. I would like to show my great respect to the reviewers for their scholarly contributions as unknown heroes. I thank our Deputy Editor, Prof. Anjun Qin (Guangzhou) and Associate Editors, Prof. Yuning Hong (Melbourne), Prof. Gen-ichi Konishi (Tokyo), Prof. Paul R. McGonigal (Durham), Prof. Kazuo Tanaka (Kyoto), Prof. Jianping Xie (Singapore), Prof. Shuang-Quan Zang (Zhengzhou), and Prof. Yu Shrike Zhang (Boston) for their professional and productive work. Because of their fair screening and fast handling, we were able to make the first decision in 20 days on average after a manuscript was online submitted to our editorial office. I would also like to thank our partners and friends at Wiley, including Dr. José Oliveira, Dr. Xin Su, Dr. Guangchen Xu, and Dr. Jing Tang, for their guidance and advice, and our in-house editors Dr. Yujie Tu, Dr. Yao Ma, Dr. Ying Yu, and Dr. Qiyao Li for editorial management, process monitoring and event organization. Last but not least, we would like to thank our readers. We are always eager to hear suggestions and feedbacks from our readers for further improvements. Paper, paper, paper—it is the quality of the paper that determines the fate of a journal. As emphasized at the beginning of this editorial, we honor the great papers published in Aggregate on its “paper anniversary.” With the enthusiastic support from the research community, Aggregate will continue to publish high-quality papers. United we stand, aggregated we shine! Together, let us work toward the rising of Aggregate to a new height in the coming year!
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