Is Advanced Materials a Good Journal? 2026 Honest Take

Decision cue: Only submit if you have a genuine materials breakthrough backed by rigorous characterization and clear performance advantages. Anything less will be desk rejected.

Advanced Materials is not where normal papers go

Advanced Materials publishes breakthroughs. New materials with superior properties, new fabrication methods, or novel insights into why a material behaves as it does. The bar is legitimately high.

This is a Wiley flagship journal that gets submissions from every top materials research group on earth. Stanford, MIT, ETH Zurich, Max Planck, Tsinghua, national labs. When you submit to Advanced Materials, you're competing against the best materials scientists alive.

The numbers

Impact factor: 26.8 (2024 JCR). Ranked #10 out of 460 materials science journals globally. This is elite territory. Compare to Nature Materials (IF 38.6), Nature Nanotechnology (IF 36.5). Advanced Materials is in that neighborhood.

Acceptance rate: 8-12%. For every 100 submissions, 8-12 get accepted.

Desk rejection rate: ~70%. If your paper isn't a clear breakthrough, it doesn't get sent to peer review.

APC: $5,800-7,100 for open access via Wiley.

Review timeline: 6-12 weeks to first decision if it survives desk review.

What "breakthrough" actually means here

Not "we made a new compound." That's normal chemistry.

Advanced Materials wants:

• A new material with a property that's significantly better than existing options (2x improvement minimum, often 5-10x)
• Clear mechanistic understanding of why it works
• Applications that matter (electronics, energy, medicine, catalysis)
• Rigorous characterization (crystallography, spectroscopy, testing)

A paper showing a new perovskite solar cell with 30% efficiency (10% higher than previous record) with complete characterization and mechanistic insights: good submission.

A paper describing a new polymer blend with 5% better tensile strength: desk rejected.

Is it worth submitting?

Only if you have a genuine breakthrough. If you're a postdoc or PhD student and your advisor says "this could go to Advanced Materials," listen to that. If your advisor doesn't mention it, it probably isn't ready.

Who publishes there

Top research groups at elite universities and national labs. You'll see names from Stanford, MIT, Cambridge, leading Chinese universities, Japanese institutions with strong materials programs.

The journal is genuinely international. A huge percentage of accepted papers come from Asia now, reflecting the materials research boom there.

Submit to Advanced Materials if:

• You have a new material with significant performance advantages
• You have complete mechanistic understanding
• You have rigorous characterization
• Your work could impact real applications
• Your advisor explicitly suggests it

Don't submit if:

• Your result is incremental improvement
• You don't have complete characterization
• You made the material but don't understand why it works
• You're in a rush and need publication within 3 months

Bottom line

Advanced Materials is elite and selective. If you have a genuine materials breakthrough, it belongs there. The prestige is real. Publishing here is a major career moment. But the bar is high, and the rejection rate reflects that. Only submit if you're confident you have something special.