Advanced Materials 'Under Review': What Each Status Means and the Wiley Transfer Option

Advanced Materials uses professional in-house editors who specialize in materials science. The desk decision is based on:

• Novelty: Is this a new material, a new property, or a new fabrication approach? Incremental improvements to known materials are redirected to sister journals.

• Broad impact: Does the advance matter across materials science, or only within one narrow subfield? A better thermoelectric material is interesting. A new material with fundamentally different properties that opens a new application space is more interesting.

• Characterization quality: Are the materials fully characterized? Is the performance benchmarked against the state of the art?

• Completeness: Is this a complete story, or a preliminary result that needs more work?

If your paper has passed this screen, the editors believe the novelty and impact are potentially at the Advanced Materials level.

• Accept: very rare on first round
• Minor revision: specific changes needed. Strong signal
• Major revision: substantive concerns. May require new characterization or benchmarking data. Returns to reviewers
• Reject: the novelty or impact did not meet the threshold
• Transfer: the editor suggests a Wiley Advanced Materials sister journal

Advanced Materials editors frequently suggest transfers to:

• Advanced Functional Materials (IF 19): Strong functional materials work below the Advanced Materials novelty bar. This is the most common transfer destination.

• Advanced Energy Materials (IF 26): Energy-focused materials research
• Advanced Science: Broader science scope
• Small (IF 12.1): Nanoscale-focused studies
• Advanced Materials Technologies: Application-focused materials work

A transfer preserves your manuscript context and sometimes reviewer reports. The receiving journal does not start from scratch. This often leads to faster publication than submitting cold to a new journal.

If an editor suggests transfer, evaluate it seriously. Advanced Functional Materials, for example, has an impact factor of 18.5 and is a strong journal in its own right. A transfer is not a rejection of the science. It is a redirection to a journal where the scope fit is better.

Once an Advanced Materials paper is under review, the most useful move is to prepare for the specific places reviewers usually press hardest rather than refreshing the portal. That normally means having the characterization package, benchmark comparisons, and stability or durability evidence organized enough that you can answer pointed reviewer questions quickly.

That preparation adds value even if the decision is negative, because the same evidence package usually determines whether the next submission starts from a stronger position.

For most authors, the smartest extra step is to decide now which one reviewer criticism would hurt the paper most: benchmark fairness, characterization completeness, or application breadth. If you already know that answer, the eventual revision letter becomes faster and more credible.

In our pre-submission review work with manuscripts targeting Advanced Materials, three failure patterns generate the most consistent desk rejections and major revision requests. We find these across manuscripts we've reviewed through our Advanced Materials submission readiness check.

The characterization package that covers initial performance but not stability. Advanced Materials reviewers specifically evaluate stability and durability data as part of their assessment of whether a materials advance is real and deployable. We observe that roughly 40% of materials papers we review provide excellent initial-performance characterization but limited or no data on performance under realistic conditions: temperature cycling, humidity exposure, long-term operation, or cycling stability for energy materials. This is the single most common major revision trigger at Advanced Materials. Including at least one stability figure in the initial submission prevents this predictable request.

The novelty argument based on performance metrics rather than new capabilities. Advanced Materials desk editors look for new capabilities, not just improved numbers on existing metrics. We find that papers framing novelty as "our material achieves X% improvement over reported values" face stronger desk scrutiny than papers framing novelty as "our approach enables a property combination that was previously unachievable." The editors are asking whether the performance improvement opens a genuinely new application space or just advances a benchmark number. Papers that address this distinction in the cover letter and introduction, and that explicitly name what becomes possible because of the advance, clear the desk at higher rates.

The benchmark comparison that excludes recent literature. Advanced Materials is a fast-moving field and the review cycle is rapid. We observe that papers benchmarked against materials reported 2+ years earlier generate reviewer requests for updated comparisons in roughly half of cases. The materials science community tracks performance metrics closely, and a reviewer who published a competing material in the last 12 months will notice the omission. SciRev community data for Advanced Materials shows "comparison to recent literature" as a consistent reviewer comment. A systematic search of the past 18 months of Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, and Nature Materials before finalizing comparison figures is the most reliable prevention.