Announcements

Name: Dr. Hiroyuki Ueda
Affiliations: ¹ Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM), Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia; ² Battery Research and Innovation Hub, Deakin University, 5/154 Highbury Road, Burwood, Victoria 3125, Australia
Research interests: electrochemistry, rechargeable batteries, solid-state batteries, ionic liquids, plastic crystals, solid electrolytes, electrode slurry preparation, slurry coating

Dr. Hiroyuki Ueda is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University. Dr. Ueda received his Ph.D. from Kumamoto University (Japan) and worked as a Battery Development Engineer in the industry for almost 4 years. Since 2020, he has led many industry collaborations. His current studies involve the use of advanced electrolytes and electrodes for battery applications, especially those dedicated to realizing practical solid-state batteries using plastic crystals as promising solid electrolytes.

The following is an interview with Dr. Hiroyuki Ueda:

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself to our readers and tell us a little bit about your fields of interest?
I am a passionate battery chemist with unique work experience in both academic and industry settings. My academic research career started in 2010 at Kumamoto University, under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Soichiro Yoshimoto. I studied the electrochemistry of redox-active species at ionic liquid | gold single crystal interfaces and received a Ph.D. degree (Doctor of Engineering) in 2016. After graduation, I dived into the battery field; I was committed to many battery projects while I worked in the R&D centers of three companies in the chemical and automotive sectors. I moved back to academia in 2020 and have been working on multiple battery-related projects using solid-state analogs of ionic liquids called organic ionic plastic crystals at Deakin University for over 5 years.
My research interests include (i) the development of solid electrolyte membranes and composite electrodes (containing electrolytes before cell assembly) for solid-state batteries, (ii) the exploration of eco-friendly battery manufacturing without losing performance metrics, and (iii) the strategic accumulation of valuable experimental datasets that help clarify the correlation between a material’s structure or process parameters and an electrolyte’s, electrode’s, or battery’s properties to underpin our understanding of key factors to improve battery performance.

2. Could you elaborate on how you initially learned about the Batteries journal? Furthermore, what inspired you to apply for the Batteries Outstanding Reviewer Award 2024?
I believe the Batteries journal has become one of the well-known journals in the field of energy storage, and I was already aware of its strong reputation (especially for its rapid publication process), since I resumed my academic career in 2020. The Batteries journal has been listed as one of my candidate journals (with ideal intended readers) to which my research findings in the battery field can be submitted.
Because I knew that many senior researchers had commitments to peer reviews to support academic publication systems, I felt that participating in peer reviews would be a must-do as my career grows. I debuted as a peer reviewer for journals in 2022 after completing some online and in-person courses for those who need to be equipped with peer-review skills and ethics. Initially, I helped with some reviews for the journal for which my mentor served as a Senior Editor, which enabled me to gain actual peer-review experience and gradually intensified my willingness to contribute to peer-review processes for battery-focused manuscripts. Therefore, I applied to be a Volunteer Reviewer for Batteries in 2023. Since then, I have been exposed to many opportunities to engage in peer reviews of the latest findings in the battery field and tried to provide accurate, fast, and unbiased comments to help the decision-making process of submitted manuscripts, which I believe was fully recognized by the Selection Committee of the award.

3. Which research topics do you think will be of particular interest to the research community in the coming years?
I think the effective use of AI (typically machine learning) in material discovery and process optimization has gradually been playing a crucial role in the battery field. Batteries are very complicated devices, where engineering factors would govern performance rather than chemical factors alone; finding highly functional materials is a minimum requirement for the desired battery performance, but investigating how to make (and test) batteries using these materials is also important to leverage their full potential. We might need an unlimited amount of time to investigate all possible experimental conditions to decipher the material–process–property relationship of the resulting batteries thoroughly and, therefore, reliable data-driven approaches to shorten our time for experiments have been highly sought after to minimize labor and resources. I believe there will still be room for battery experts to make decisions (especially for slurry preparation steps), but I think it is worthwhile for R&D environments to flexibly and wisely exploit AI capabilities so that they can not only streamline many parameterized tasks but also cut out whole battery prototyping for probable dysfunctional compositions to improve their competitiveness in battery R&D.

4. What is your opinion of the open access model of publishing?
Personally, I like the open access model because it allows publications to reach a broader audience. This model often helped me; I was able to read scientific articles even though my employer did not have a subscription to a journal. Furthermore, downloading articles from open access journals just needs one click, which is quite convenient and time-saving, even when compared to the situation for subscribed non-open-access journals, because they usually require authentication before downloading articles.
However, I think the journal’s Editorial Office and invited reviewers for open access journals should diligently contribute to science development and establish a positive reputation within a relevant research community. Scientists know that the existence of so-called predatory journals and the open-access model is often at risk of being criticized as predatory because the journals would have a preference to accept as many papers as possible to gain their revenue without necessarily advancing science. To relieve this concern, I think open access journals need to be transparent about their peer-review and publication processes (i.e., how submitted manuscripts will be handled); editorial board members; and, for the authors and invited reviewers of the submitted manuscripts, how many reviewers are involved, their comments, and decision letters. The more authors and reviewers have a positive experience in the publication procedure and the impacts of published papers in open-access journals, the more the journals will be valuable in the research community, and their open access model will be successful.

5. What qualities do you think reviewers need? Do you have anything to say to other reviewers?
I believe accurate, fast, and unbiased reviews are preferable and truly help the journal’s decision-making process for science development. Reviewers need to leverage their expertise to request corrections about scientifically wrong, illogical, or misleading parts and to suggest room for improvement in submitted manuscripts. To provide accurate comments, reviewers should only accept an invitation for a manuscript in the area in which they are surely an expert. Even though a manuscript falls in their research area, if reviewers think they cannot commit to review within the journal’s standard review time, saying “No” (and suggesting alternative potential reviewers) to a review invitation is recommended. This helps rapid publication without holding manuscripts unnecessarily. Lastly, reviewers should not make their comments based on their positive or negative feelings toward a specific gender, race, or career stage where the author of a manuscript fits in. The science in the manuscript should be evaluated in an unbiased way. This means that submissions from well-known, highly reputable research groups are not a free pass to publications; reviewers need to find their value based on what is written there rather than the fame and past research contributions of the authors. On the other hand, submissions from authors that reviewers would not like should be equally evaluated; unfortunately, I have seen many unscientific overcriticisms because of this (e.g., unnecessarily asking English proofreading for authors from non-English-speaking countries, denying the quality of writing because the authors are graduate students without plenty of past publications, etc.). If reviewers notice a conflict of interest with the authors, they should not accept a review invitation. Also, the Editorial Office of a journal is responsible for removing unscientific overcriticisms (or asking reviewers to correct them) to establish a fair, comfortable review process for all parties.

6. What do you think are the main criteria that should be taken seriously in the process of reviewing manuscripts?
I think manuscripts should properly tell a story: what past studies in the focused field were, what research questions were, what methods the authors used to address them, and what the experimental results and their meanings in addressing the research questions were (plus, remaining issues and their possible countermeasures if necessary). Reviewers need to see if manuscripts deliver a clear story and if the presented data aligns well with it and should not unnecessarily request excellent performance metrics (e.g., rate and cycle performance of batteries) and additional characterizations that would not change the authors’ main findings. In this context, it is fine to present negative experimental results if they surely help form the story and readers can understand the reasons contributing to them; reviewers should not criticize the negative data only because of their appearance.
In addition, experimental procedures and reproducibility of experimental results should be properly explained in manuscripts. In the battery field, I often feel that some submitted manuscripts do not fully explain how electrodes were formulated and their details (e.g., size, composition, information about each ingredient, mass loading, density, porosity, etc.). Because these parameters affect the test results of batteries, the authors should be responsible for describing enough details. I think reviewers need to see if the experimental section delivers concise information about experiments so readers can replicate them in subsequent studies. On the other hand, I recommend ensuring reproducibility; for instance, because the test results of batteries vary from cell to cell, the authors are encouraged to provide how many cells per experimental condition were evaluated. If reviewers feel doubt about the reproducibility, they should ask the authors to clarify this point, which avoids publishing a misleading or actually wrong tendency of the data. These efforts underpin the dissemination of reliable information about scientific findings for research communities.

7. What is the secret to a happy scientific life? Have you ever encountered any difficulties conducting research and how did you overcome them?
I think the simplest secret is “Focusing on what YOU can change”. We can (mostly) control ourselves, but we cannot decide other people’s actions. Therefore, it is better to reduce the dependence of our short-term (e.g., daily) targets on what we cannot control. This helps make these targets more manageable and increases the likelihood of being satisfied with achievements. I think the same secret is applied to doing research; we might not have to set optimistic short-term targets (e.g., high performance metrics) because we do not know if our new experiments can deliver the expected results (which we cannot control). Instead, what we might need to do would be to set short-term targets that are less dependent on the quality or significance of data we generate (e.g., conducting three experiments and analyzing the factors that contribute to the results by a specified date). My friend said, “Data is data”, which is still in my mind as a useful, stress-free way of thinking. This encourages us to shift our focal point to discussions about what we can understand from data, which implies the next possible experiments or analyses. So far, I have faced many difficulties in research, but this approach has helped me a lot; a resilient, consistent, and step-by-step research commitment without feeling nervous about negative data surely filled gaps in answering research questions. In addition, it is important to develop our communication skills so that we can ask informal opinions about our research difficulties from more senior or expert researchers in a relevant field. This is because, sometimes, they already know the answers (especially if our difficulties are related to experimental methodology) or the approaches to help address the difficulties.

8. Do you have any advice for aspiring young researchers looking to make a meaningful impact in their respective fields?
I would say, “Follow the path you like intrinsically”. I think you would not be able to make a meaningful impact if you do not really like what you are doing right now; even if you get short-term satisfaction there, your vitality will run out eventually. This would be unscientific, but I presume our gut feelings might be true and often tell the path that we need to follow. If you like your research, you might be able to keep your motivation and consistently contribute to its progress. It is fine if the research that energizes you is away from hot topics, trends, or populated study areas; your continuous efforts will surely generate meaningful research outcomes, and someone will definitely recognize its value (as this happened to me). Therefore, keeping genuine motivation should come first before trying to make a meaningful impact.