Advanced Materials Formatting Requirements: Complete Author Guide

The abstract format varies by article type in Advanced Materials.

• Research Articles: 200-word unstructured abstract
• Communications: No separate abstract (opening paragraph serves this function)
• Reviews and Progress Reports: 200-word unstructured abstract

For Research Articles:

• Word limit: 200 words
• Structure: Unstructured (single paragraph)
• Citations: Not allowed
• Keywords: 5 keywords required, listed below the abstract

The abstract should summarize the problem, approach, main result, and significance in a single paragraph. Advanced Materials editors want to see a clear statement of what's new and why it matters to a broad materials science audience.

For Communications, the formatting is different. The paper starts directly with text, and the first paragraph (typically 3-5 sentences) functions as the abstract. This paragraph appears in database listings and search results. Don't bury the key finding at the end of a long introductory paragraph.

Keywords: Advanced Materials requires exactly 5 keywords, placed below the abstract (for Research Articles) or below the TOC image description (for Communications). Choose specific terms that help indexing. "Nanoparticles" alone is too broad; "gold nanoparticle surface plasmon resonance" is more useful.

Figures are the centerpiece of most Advanced Materials papers. Materials science is inherently visual, and the journal's editors expect high-quality figures that tell the story clearly.

Figure specifications:

TOC image (mandatory): This is the most distinctive formatting requirement for Advanced Materials. Every submission must include a Table of Contents image that will appear in the journal's online table of contents.

TOC image specifications:

• Dimensions: 5 cm high x 12.7 cm wide
• Resolution: 300 dpi minimum
• Format: TIFF or EPS
• Must include a brief text description (50 words maximum) submitted alongside the image
• Should be visually appealing and scientifically meaningful

The TOC image is your paper's first impression. Advanced Materials readers scan the table of contents looking for interesting work, and the TOC image is what catches their eye. Don't just crop a figure from your paper. Design a purpose-built image that conveys the key concept. The best TOC images in Advanced Materials are clean, visually striking, and self-explanatory without reading the paper.

Table formatting:

• Tables should have headers for every column
• Use horizontal rules only (top, below header, bottom)
• Editable format (not images)
• Tables count toward the page limit

Advanced Materials uses Wiley's numbered reference style. It's a sequential system similar to other numbered styles but with Wiley-specific formatting conventions.

In-text citations: Superscript numbers in square brackets, e.g., [1], [2,3], [4-7]. Numbers assigned by order of first appearance.

Reference list format:

[1] A. B. Author, C. D. Author, J. Abbrev. Name Year, Volume, Pages.

Key formatting details:

• Author initials before last name, with spaces between initials (A. B. Smith)
• All authors listed (no "et al." cutoff in the reference list)
• Journal title abbreviated per ISO 4, in italics
• Year comes after the journal name, followed by volume and page numbers
• No issue number for most journals
• DOIs are encouraged but not mandatory
• Book format: A. B. Author, Title of Book, Publisher, City, Year

There's no formal reference cap, but Communications typically cite 20-30 references and Research Articles cite 40-60. Reviews can have 200+ references.

The Wiley reference style differs from Elsevier's in several ways: Wiley places the year after the journal name (not in parentheses), doesn't use bold for volume numbers in the submitted manuscript, and uses a different author name format. If you're switching from an Elsevier journal, update your reference formatting carefully.

Advanced Materials calls its supplementary content "Supporting Information" (SI), following Wiley's convention.

What belongs in Supporting Information:

• Detailed experimental procedures and characterization methods
• Additional figures (SEM/TEM images, XRD patterns, spectral data)
• Extended data tables
• Video files (e.g., in situ microscopy, mechanical testing)
• Computational details and input files

SI requirements:

• Submitted as a single PDF file (for text, figures, and tables)
• Additional media files (videos) submitted separately
• Must be self-contained with its own figure and table numbering (Figure S1, Table S1)
• Every SI item must be cited in the main text
• No size limit specified, but keep it reasonable

For Communications (4-page limit), the Supporting Information is where most of the detailed experimental work lives. It's common for a 4-page Communication to have 20+ pages of SI. Reviewers expect this and will check the SI carefully.

A formatting detail specific to Wiley journals: the Supporting Information should begin with a standard header that includes the article title, all author names, and a brief table of contents listing the SI figures and tables. Wiley's template includes this header format.

Advanced Materials requires a cover letter and several additional components.

Cover letter requirements:

• Explain why the work is suitable for Advanced Materials specifically (not just "a leading materials journal")
• Highlight the novelty and broad impact
• Confirm originality and that the work isn't under consideration elsewhere
• Suggest 4-6 potential reviewers

Additional required components:

• TOC image and 50-word description (mandatory)
• Keywords (exactly 5)
• Conflict of interest disclosure
• Data availability statement
• ORCID iD for the corresponding author

For Communications specifically: Submit a brief statement explaining why the Communication format is appropriate rather than a full Research Article. This should address the urgency or impact of the finding.

Advanced Materials is highly selective (acceptance rate under 10%), so the cover letter carries real weight. Editors use it to decide whether to send the paper for review or desk reject. Be specific about what's new. "We report a novel nanomaterial with excellent properties" won't get you past the editor. "We demonstrate the first room-temperature synthesis of phase-pure 2D perovskite nanosheets with carrier mobilities exceeding 100 cm²/Vs, resolving a decade-old challenge in solution-processed semiconductors" tells the editor exactly what's at stake.

These are the formatting details that experienced Advanced Materials authors know:

Page limits are on published pages, not manuscript pages. This is the most common source of confusion. Your double-spaced, single-column manuscript might be 25 pages but format down to 10 published pages. Use the Wiley template in two-column format to estimate accurately.

Communications don't have a traditional abstract. The opening paragraph serves as the abstract and must be written accordingly. Database services (Web of Science, Scopus) will extract this paragraph as the abstract.

TOC image is non-negotiable. You can't submit without one. Plan for this from the start of your writing process, not as an afterthought.

Color figure policy changed. Color is now free for both online and print publication in Advanced Materials. This applies to all article types. Don't waste time creating grayscale versions of your figures.

Experimental section placement. In Research Articles, the Experimental Section comes at the end of the paper, after the main text and before the references. In Communications, detailed experimental procedures go entirely in the Supporting Information.

Wiley's production edits. Wiley's copyediting team will make changes to your manuscript during production. You'll receive proofs to review. Pay close attention to figure quality in the proofs, because Wiley's system sometimes compresses images below the quality you submitted.

Dual-format submission. For initial submission, Advanced Materials accepts a single merged PDF containing all text, figures, and SI. At the revision stage, they'll want separate files (manuscript, figures, SI).

These trip up even regular Advanced Materials submitters:

1. TOC image dimensions. The exact size (5 cm x 12.7 cm) is enforced. Images that don't match will be sent back for resizing.

1. Keyword count. Exactly 5 keywords are required. Not 4, not 6. The system will flag this.

1. Communication length. 4 published pages means 4 pages, not 4.5. Manuscripts that exceed the page limit at the proof stage require cuts, which is painful after acceptance.

1. Supporting Information header. The SI document must include the article title and all author names at the top. This is a Wiley requirement that's easy to forget.

1. Figure file formats. Advanced Materials is stricter than some journals about accepting only TIFF, EPS, and PDF. PNG and JPEG may be accepted for initial submission but will need to be converted for production.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Advanced Materials, four patterns generate the most consistent desk-rejection outcomes.

TOC graphic not meeting Wiley landscape dimensions. Advanced Materials requires a TOC entry image of exactly 5 cm x 12.7 cm (approximately 2 x 5 inches) in TIFF or EPS format at 300 dpi minimum. This wide landscape format is distinct from the square ACS Nano TOC (3.25 x 1.75 in) and the Angewandte Chemie square TOC (5 x 5 cm). Figures from the manuscript scaled to this aspect ratio almost always lose resolution or appear stretched. The TOC graphic must be purpose-built at these exact dimensions and is verified during production.

Manuscript length exceeding the published-page equivalent. Advanced Materials enforces limits in typeset published pages: 10 pages for Research Articles, 4 pages for Communications. Authors frequently submit manuscripts that dramatically exceed these limits because they calculate words without accounting for how figures, tables, and two-column layout affect page count. As a guide, 10 published pages corresponds to approximately 7,500-8,000 words of body text plus figures. Manuscripts that exceed the limit are returned before peer review for shortening.

Applied performance study without materials-level innovation. Advanced Materials publishes novel functional materials with new or enhanced properties, not studies that apply known materials to new applications. A study demonstrating that a well-characterized polymer achieves good performance in a new device architecture, without introducing a materials innovation at the molecular or microstructural level, is rejected for scope. The author guidelines specify that submissions must report "advanced materials with outstanding properties and functionalities."

Characterization insufficient for claims made. Wiley reviewers at Advanced Materials expect comprehensive structural and property characterization commensurate with the claims. For a new energy storage material claiming high cycling stability, reviewers expect: TEM at multiple resolutions, XPS, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and post-cycling characterization. Manuscripts that report promising performance numbers without mechanistic characterization data to explain the origin of those properties generate major revision requests focused on reproducibility and mechanistic understanding.

A Advanced Materials submission readiness check evaluates TOC graphic compliance, manuscript length, scope alignment, and characterization depth against these patterns.