Advanced Materials Submission Process

Advanced Materials does not impose strict word or figure limits, but content should justify the length. A typical Research Article includes:

• 3,000 to 8,000 words
• 3 to 8 display items (figures, schemes, or tables)
• supporting information with additional data and methods

Communications (shorter, more focused) are also accepted and follow similar submission procedures.

Access the Wiley submission portal for Advanced Materials. Select the article type: Research Article, Communication, Review, Progress Report, or Essay.

Provide the title, abstract, keywords, and complete author list with affiliations. Co-author email addresses are required so they receive notification of the submission and peer review outcomes.

The cover letter matters at Advanced Materials. In-house editors use it alongside the abstract to make the triage decision. The letter should:

• state the main finding in one or two sentences
• explain why the result represents a genuine advance in materials science
• identify the broad audience that will benefit
• distinguish the work from recent publications in the field

Avoid generic statements about novelty. Explain specifically what makes the materials science advance meaningful beyond your immediate subfield.

Upload the manuscript file and all figures. Figures should be high resolution and publication-ready. The journal has specific figure formatting guidelines for accepted manuscripts, but initial submissions can use standard quality.

Supporting information goes as a separate document. This includes detailed experimental methods, additional characterization data, computational details, and extended figures or tables not in the main manuscript.

Author contributions (CRediT), competing interests, data availability, and funding declarations. Generative AI use must also be declared per Wiley's current policies.

Preview the submission and submit. The confirmation email confirms receipt.

Advanced Materials uses professional in-house editors who specialize in materials science. The editorial screen is fast and selective.

Editors evaluate:

• is the advance genuinely novel, or is it an incremental improvement?
• does the result matter across materials science, or only within one narrow specialty?
• is the quality of the materials characterization sufficient?
• are the claims supported by the data?
• is this a complete story, or a preliminary result that needs more work?

The desk rejection rate is high. Advanced Materials is among the most selective materials science journals. Papers that do not clearly demonstrate broad impact are returned quickly, often with a suggestion to submit to a sister journal (Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, etc.).

Papers that pass triage go to 2 to 3 expert reviewers. Advanced Materials uses single-anonymous review.

Reviewers evaluate:

• novelty and originality of the materials science
• quality and thoroughness of characterization
• whether the results represent a real advance over existing materials or approaches
• reproducibility and methodological rigor
• clarity of presentation and data quality

First decisions after review typically arrive in 3 to 6 weeks. Total time from submission to first decision is 4 to 8 weeks.

• Accept: rare on first round. Usually after revision.

• Minor revision: small changes. Respond promptly.

• Major revision: substantive concerns. The revised paper returns to reviewers.

• Reject: the paper does not meet the journal's novelty or impact threshold.

• Transfer: editors may suggest a Wiley sister journal. This is common and not a negative judgment on the science. Transfers preserve reviewer context.

Advanced Materials editors frequently suggest transfers to:

• Advanced Functional Materials: strong functional materials work that is excellent but below the novelty threshold for Advanced Materials
• Advanced Energy Materials: energy-focused work
• Advanced Science: broader science scope
• Small: nanoscale-focused studies

Accepting a transfer is often faster than starting a new submission elsewhere because reviewer reports travel with the manuscript.

"This work presents a novel approach to..." is not a novelty argument. "This is the first demonstration of [specific property] in [material class], which enables [specific application] that was previously impossible because [reason]" is.

Advanced Materials looks for step changes, not incremental improvements. Showing a 5% improvement in a known material's property is unlikely to pass triage. Showing a new material with fundamentally different behavior, or a new fabrication approach with broad applicability, is what editors want.

Reviewers expect thorough characterization: structural, compositional, morphological, and functional. A paper that reports an interesting property but does not fully characterize the material leaves too many questions for a journal at this level.

When editors suggest a Wiley sister journal, the transfer process preserves your reviewer reports and editorial context. Ignoring the suggestion and submitting cold to a new journal means starting from scratch.

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 framing unsupported by the submitted evidence (roughly 35%). The Advanced Materials author guidelines describe the journal as publishing work that advances the field broadly across materials science. In our experience, roughly 35% of desk rejections involve manuscripts where the framing claims broad significance but the data package consists of narrow characterization without the mechanistic insight or design principles that would make the finding relevant to researchers across materials science subfields. Editors consistently flag submissions where the broad-impact case is stated in the cover letter but not demonstrated by the manuscript itself.

Materials significance confined to one subfield at a broad journal (roughly 25%). In our experience, roughly 25% of submissions present high-quality work in a specific materials subfield such as energy storage, photovoltaics, or biomaterials without making the case for why findings will be relevant to materials scientists outside that area. Editors consistently reject manuscripts that would be well-suited to a sister journal but have been submitted to Advanced Materials for its impact factor, because the editorial filter screens for cross-disciplinary impact rather than technical excellence within a single domain.

Characterization strong but the cross-field story missing (roughly 20%). In our experience, roughly 20% of submissions include thorough characterization and solid experimental data without drawing out the conceptual implications that would make the advance interesting to a general materials science audience. In practice editors consistently screen for manuscripts where the materials science finding is packaged as a field-agnostic concept rather than as a result in one particular subfield, because Advanced Materials readers are expected to come from across the materials spectrum.

Incremental step oversold as a paradigm-shift in materials science (roughly 15%). In our experience, roughly 15% of submissions present genuine but incremental progress in a research direction using cover letter language that overstates the significance as transformative or paradigm-shifting. Editors consistently reject manuscripts where the framing mismatch between cover letter claims and manuscript data is detectable on a quick read, because the gap signals that the authors know the advance is not competitive for the journal without the elevated framing.

Cover letter missing a specific case for cross-field importance (roughly 10%). In our experience, roughly 10% of submissions arrive with cover letters that describe the technical contribution clearly but do not explain why the advance matters to materials scientists who are not already working in the same subfield. Editors consistently flag cover letters that read as specialty-journal submissions with Advanced Materials listed as the target rather than as arguments for why the work serves the journal's cross-disciplinary identity.

Before submitting to Advanced Materials, an Advanced Materials submission readiness check identifies whether your cross-field significance, mechanistic depth, and evidence package meet the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.