Solids: Exciting Research Should Be Accessible to the General Public—A Plea for a New Open Access Journal

Solid-state sciences continue to be one of the key pillars of scientific and technological progress in our society. Future challenges in energy production and use, materials for longer lasting products, health care related materials, or those for exploring space have their birthplace in the lab of solid-state scientists. Often only small variations on the atomistic scale in such materials have large consequences in their macroscopic properties. Intriguing effects such as magnetism, pyroelectricity, thermoelectricity, superconductivity, or optical and electronic properties are examples of how fundamental knowledge of the solid-state phenomena can be transformed in high-tech materials. Many times, we can only understand the working principle if we look very closely into the atomistic world and into the respective atomistic ordering of the material. Thus, when dealing with the solid-state, we must target the fundamentals of the materials to show the fascination of this topic not only to colleagues but also to students and the public. Therefore, with this journal we are addressing a field at the borderline between fundamental science, technology, and society. While in the past many scientific insights were produced in a single lab, interdisciplinary work is now promoted to understand materials and to develop new approaches to solid-state properties. In particular, the borderlines between the disciplines are interesting playing fields in which science develops dramatically.

Solids, an open-access international journal by MDPI (Basel, Switzerland), focuses on the broad field of solid-state materials. It is a forum for outstanding scientific results, the discussion of new ideas and a detailed view on both the fundamentals and applications of the solid-state. The journal publishes rigorously peer-reviewed original research papers, review articles, short communications, and opinion pieces on emerging research topics. We also welcome negative results as they may also advance the community. Thus, we explicitly encourage all authors to communicate them. We are committed to the education of young scientists and therefore particularly welcome contributions carrying the fascination of solid-state materials to students. Special Issues on selected scientific topics will multifacetedly illuminate current trends in science, thus raising the interest of more scientists in the field.

Both the editorial board and the journal staff are committed to making Solids the leading open access journal in the field of solid-state research. Committed to the scientific community, only articles of interest to a broad readership will be published that meet the high scientific standards of the reviewers and of the editorial board. Following the open-access policy, all articles in Solids are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. Solids is available free of charge to readers around the world, and copyright remains with the author(s).

On behalf of the entire Editorial Board, I invite you to submit your exciting work and proposals for Special Issues to Solids, and I look forward to your contributions. Together we will develop a journal that will become a central building block for knowledge within our community. Let’s make it happen!