Update on the 2nd Bioactive Materials Editorial Board Meeting

Following on from the 1st Editorial Board Meeting of Bioactive Materials (held April 2017, Minneapolis USA), the 2nd Editorial Board Meeting was held on the 28th August 2017 during the 9th Symposium on Biodegradable Metals for Biomedical Applications (http://biodegradablemetals.org). (see Fig. 1, Fig. 2)

Fig. 1.

Participants of the 9th symposium on biodegradable metals for biomedical applications.

Fig. 2.

Attendees to the 2nd Editorial Board Meeting for Bioactive Materials (top left to right: Dr. Norbert Hort (EBM), Prof. Frank Witte (A/Editor), Prof. Diego Mantovani (A/Editor), A/Prof. Mark Staiger (A/Editor), Prof. Carla Vogt (EBM); bottom left to right: Prof. Yufeng Zheng (Editor-in-Chief), Dr. Charles Sfeir (EBM), Dr. Frank Feyerabend (EBM), Ms. Jessica Wang (Publisher).

The Symposium was held in Bertinoro Italy (Émilie-Romagne region), 80 km southeast of Bologna. Every year the Symposium attracts ∼150 participants working in the field of biodegradable metallic biomaterials, mainly based on Mg, Fe and Zn, with ∼50 oral presentations and 90 posters delivered at the 9th Symposium by participants from 22 countries. Sessions were organised into a range of topics including metallurgy (alloying and processing, coatings, material properties, and corrosion), research concerned with testing in vitro and in vivo, and other important aspects of biological characterisation.

This year the Symposium also hosted a workshop on the “Current Status and Outlook on the Clinical Translation of Biodegradable Metals” organised by Prof. Yufeng Zheng and A/Prof. Mark Staiger. The workshop included keynote presentations and a panel discussion delivered by prominent leaders in the field. Some key areas of discussion included standardization of testing of biometal devices, current translational research in Australasia, Japan, China and South Korea, and various topics concerned with commercialisation of biodegradable metals.

The Symposium was an ideal opportunity for the editorial team of Bioactive Materials to promote the journal and review its progress over the last 12 months. Bioactive Materials also supported the Symposium by sponsoring 4 awards for the Poster Competition for young scientists, and a special edition will be published by Bioactive Materials to highlight some of the finest work presented at the Symposium.

The 2nd Editorial Board Meeting was attended by the Editor-in-Chief Prof. Yufeng Zhang, Associate Editors Prof. Diego Mantovani, A/Prof. Mark Staiger, and Prof. Frank Witte, and Editorial Board Members Prof. Carla Vogt, Prof. Charles Sfeir, Dr. Norbert Hort and Dr. Frank Feyerabend. The discussion was focused on a number of areas: (i) developing closer networks with relevant research groups; (ii) increased involvement in the sponsorship of conferences (e.g. ACS-PMSE: Biomaterials Science & Translational Medicine, Young Investigator Awards, 20–24 August 2017, Washington, D.C., 6th International Symposium on Surface and Interface of Biomaterials, Oct 2017, Chengdu, China); (iii) further streamlining of the review process to assist reviewers with their important tasks; and (iv) greater promotion of special editions that cover critical topics of interest, with the help of Editorial Board Members or guest editors invited by the Senior Editorial Board.

Ms. Jessica Wang (Publisher, Ke Ai) presented an overview and publication statistics that demonstrated a continuing increase in submission rate over the last year. The impact of the journal will continue to increase as efforts are being continually made to have the journal indexed as widely as possible. Bioactive Materials is now indexed by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and applications to SCI, Scopus, and PubMed are pending. The journal has also become more widely accessible since it was made available Open Access and thus free to read via Elsevier's ScienceDirect. Accepted papers mostly originate from China, USA, Germany, Italy, Australia and India. The journal is also performing well in terms of article processing times in comparison with other journals in the field, with an average time to final decision of 80 days.

On behalf of the senior editorial team, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of our Editorial Board Members and reviewers who are helping us to make this ‘young’ journal a success. All of us on the editorial team are strongly committed to disseminating research that specifically aims to elaborate our understanding of responses on both sides of the biology-materials interface.