Advanced Materials Submission Guide: Requirements, Formatting and What Editors Want

Most authors submit either a Communication or a Research Article. The difference isn't just length: Communications are expected to represent a breakthrough finding that should be communicated immediately. Research Articles can be broader studies that build the full case systematically.

Advanced Materials uses Wiley's ScholarOne system. Key steps:

1. Manuscript file: MS Word (.docx) or LaTeX. Figures embedded or as separate files.
2. Cover letter: Critical. Editors read this before the paper.
3. Graphical table of contents (TOC) entry: Required. One image (8.5 x 8.5 cm at 300 dpi minimum) plus a 2-3 sentence summary statement. This appears in the digital table of contents and on social media.
4. Supporting information: Separate PDF containing detailed experimental methods, supplementary characterization, full spectra, and additional figures.
5. Conflict of interest statement: Required.
6. Data availability statement: Required.

Text: No specific word limit, but Communications are strictly 6 journal pages. Editors measure this, so overlong Communications get returned before review.

Abstract: 250 words maximum for Research Articles and Communications. No subheadings. Must be accessible to a general materials science audience.

Keywords: 6-10 terms. Include material class, property/function, and application.

References: Author-Year format (e.g., Smith et al., 2024). Advanced Materials uses a numbered reference format in the published version; your manuscript can use either during review.

Figures: High-resolution (300 dpi minimum for halftones, 1000 dpi for line art). Each figure needs a standalone caption. Figures are expected to tell the story visually, Advanced Materials figures are known for their quality.

Experimental section: Brief in the main text, comprehensive in Supporting Information. Methods in the main text should be readable but not exhaustive. Supporting Information is where reviewers look for full protocols, detailed synthesis, full spectra, and characterization data.

Your cover letter is the first editorial impression of your paper. At a journal where most papers are desk-rejected, it determines whether an editor reads far enough to find out.

What to include:

1. The conceptual question your paper answers (not the technique you used)
2. The key result and why it's a conceptual advance over existing work
3. The specific published papers your work goes beyond (name them)
4. Why Advanced Materials' readership (not a specialist journal's readership) needs to see this

What not to include: generic statements about fitting the journal's scope, lists of techniques used, or any version of "this work has never been done before" without naming the prior work.

Advanced Materials' desk rejection rate is roughly 70-80%. The editors who make these decisions are experienced materials scientists. They know the field and can spot incremental work quickly.

Papers that pass the desk show:

A conceptual advance, not just new data. There's a difference between "we made a better solar cell" and "we discovered why grain boundary passivation by this class of molecule improves efficiency, and showed a design rule that generalizes to other perovskite compositions." The second is a conceptual advance.

Breadth of interest. Advanced Materials readers work across the whole materials spectrum. Your paper needs to be interesting to someone working in a different area. A paper on OLEDs should have a finding relevant to a biomaterials researcher's thinking about organic electronic interfaces, even if they won't apply it directly.

Complete data. Don't submit a half-finished story. Advanced Materials reviewers will ask for all the characterization anyway, and editors can see when key measurements are missing.

Advanced Materials reviewers evaluate:

• Novelty relative to the current literature (reviewers will cite specific papers)
• Completeness of characterization (is the material fully described?)
• Mechanism (is there understanding, not just observation?)
• State-of-the-art comparison (do your device metrics benchmark against the best published results?)
• Reproducibility of reported data (are error bars present? multiple replicates?)
• Figure quality and data presentation

Reviewers write detailed reports. Expect 5-10 specific points per reviewer, including requests for additional experiments or characterization. "Minor revision" at Advanced Materials often means 3-5 additional experiments.

Advanced Materials editors sometimes suggest alternatives. If they mention Advanced Functional Materials, Small, or Advanced Science, those aren't consolation prizes: they're appropriate venues for the work. Consider them seriously.

If no suggestion is made, common alternatives by area:

• Energy materials: Advanced Energy Materials (JIF 24.4, Wiley)
• Nanoscale work: ACS Nano (JIF 16.0) or Nano Letters (JIF 9.1)
• Functional materials: Advanced Functional Materials (JIF 18.5, Wiley)
• Biomaterials: Biomaterials (JIF 14.5, Elsevier)

For the full journal overview, see the Advanced Materials journal page. For review timeline expectations, see Advanced Materials review time. Our Advanced Materials submission readiness check covers desk rejection risk and reviewer readiness for high-impact journals.

Impact factor source: Clarivate Journal Citation Reports, JCR 2024.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Advanced Materials, five patterns generate the most consistent desk rejections worth knowing before submission.

• Broad-impact claim not justified by the evidence package (roughly 35%). The Advanced Materials author guidelines position the journal as publishing work that will advance the field broadly across materials science subfields. In our experience, roughly 35% of desk rejections involve manuscripts where the conceptual framing promises broad significance but the evidence package consists of characterization and performance data from a single material class without the mechanistic insight that would make the finding relevant to researchers outside the immediate subfield. Editors consistently flag submissions where the significance claim is not matched by the depth and generality of the evidence.

• Characterization thorough but materials significance too narrow (roughly 25%). In our experience, roughly 25% of submissions present complete, technically rigorous characterization of a material without establishing why the findings matter beyond the specific compound or application reported. Editors consistently reject manuscripts that would be well-suited to a specialty journal in the author's subfield but reach for Advanced Materials without making the case that the advance has implications for the broader materials science community the journal serves.

• Scope mismatch between a subfield paper and a broad journal (roughly 20%). In our experience, roughly 20% of submissions are clearly strong papers in their own domain but have been submitted to Advanced Materials because of the journal's impact factor rather than because the work addresses questions of interest across multiple materials science subdisciplines. In practice editors consistently screen for this mismatch, because papers that make sense only to readers in one specialty do not serve the journal's cross-disciplinary function regardless of their technical quality.

• Incremental result without cross-subfield significance (roughly 15%). In our experience, roughly 15% of submissions report a genuine improvement in a material property or device performance that represents solid progress within a research program but does not change how other materials scientists think about a class of materials, a mechanism, or a design principle. Editors consistently reject manuscripts where the advance is meaningful in context but not conceptually significant enough to compete with the top research being submitted from across all of materials science.

• Cover letter omits a case for broad materials science priority (roughly 10%). In our experience, roughly 10% of submissions arrive with cover letters that describe the work technically but do not explain why Advanced Materials specifically is the right venue or which communities beyond the authors' own will find the result relevant. Editors consistently flag cover letters that read as generic manuscript submissions rather than as targeted arguments for why the work belongs in this journal at this moment in the field.

SciRev author-reported review times provide additional community benchmarks when planning your submission timeline.

Before submitting to Advanced Materials, an Advanced Materials submission readiness check identifies whether your broad-impact case, mechanistic depth, and cross-subfield significance meet the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.