2022 Annual Report of Soft Science

The year 2022 has been significant for Soft Science (SS). Thanks to the great effort and contributions made by authors, Editorial Board Members, reviewers, webinar supporters, readers, as well as the Editorial Office staff, SS has achieved remarkable results and progress in the past year. Hereby, we would like to share the development of the journal in 2022 from the following aspects.

1. Publication

In 2022, SS haspublished 4 issues (Figure 1), including 22 articles (11 Research Articles, 9 Review Articles and 2 Perspectives), covering hydrogels, polymer, bioelectronics, 3D printing, human-machine interfaces and so on. The authors of published articles are mainly from the USA, China, Japan and other countries. A total of 71 reviewers from different countries strictly reviewed the articles to ensure their quality. We waived the article processing charges for 22 published articles, reducing financial pressure on scholars and promoting science communication and innovation. So far, we have received 35,523 views (Figure 2A) and 10,679 downloads (Figure 2B) from the USA, the UK, Canada and other countries.

Figure 1. Covers of published issues in 2022

Figure 2: Distribution by countries/regions of total article views and downloads

2. Editorial Board

In 2022, 22 outstanding scholars joined the Youth Editorial Board. As of December 31, 2022, SS has 65 Editorial Board members from 9 countries, including the USA, China, South Korea, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Australia, the UK and Malaysia (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Country distribution of Editorial Board

Meanwhile, the Editorial Office of SS actively conducts in-depth exchanges with the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board. The journal held an Editorial Board Meeting (Figure 4) in March and a Youth Editorial Board Meeting (Figure 5) in October. The two meetings unified the Editorial Board member's philosophy of running the journal, clarified the future direction and strategy, and laid a solid foundation for long-term development.

Figure 4. 2022 Editorial Board Meeting

Figure 5. 2022 Youth Editorial Board Meeting

3. Featured Content

To strengthen communication between scholars during the COVID-19 pandemic, we held 7 webinars in 2022, which were highly praised by scholars. A total of 1,298,00 audiences witnessed the establishment of a true academic exchange platform. We highly appreciate these scholars (Figure 6) including Prof. Xinge Yu, Prof. Cunjiang Yu, Prof. Zhigang Wu, Prof. John A Rogers, Prof. Dae-Hyeong Kim, Prof. Xiaodong Chen, and Prof. Zuankai Wang for their great support to webinars. Please check the journal website for more webinars: https://oaepublish.com/ss/webinars.

Figure 6. Keynote speakers of Soft Science webinar

Also, SS was horned to invite several outstanding experts to lead following Special Issues to gather brilliant ideas and inspiration in this field.

(1) Topic: Flexible and Stretchable Electronics Based on Nanotechnology(Figure 7A)
(2) Topic: Wearable Sensors for Sweat Analysis (Figure 7B)
(3) Topic: Wearable and IoT Sensors as Human-machine Interfaces (Figure 7C)
(4) Topic: Advanced Flexible Thermoelectric Materials and Devices (Figure 7D)
(5) Topic: Skin Electronics for Intelligent Healthcare Monitoring (Figure 7E)

For more details about Special Issues, please check: https://www.oaepublish.com/ss/special_issues

Figure 7. Cover of Special Issues

4. Collaborations

To further promote innovation and development and expand the influence of SS in the related fields, in 2022, we successfully cooperated with 3 academic conferences (Figures A, B and C) and 1 platform (Figure D), which encourage academic exchanges, promote the publications, and improve the visibility.

Figure 8. Collaborations with conferences and platform

On November 11, 2022, SS officially became a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (Figure 9). SS consistently adheres to the COPE Core Practices and the COPE Guidelines to ensure a rigorous peer-review process under strict ethical policies.

Figure 9. COPE logo with SS membership number

5. Citations and Indexing

In 2022, all published articles were cited by 53 different journals and received 69 citations. Table 1 shows part of the journals that cited the article published in SS.

Table 1. Part of the journals that cited the article published in Soft Science

In 2022, the journal was indexed in Dimensions and Lens (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Logo of Dimensions and LENS

Overall, 2022 has been an extraordinary year for SS. In 2023, we promise to continue adhering to the principle of high-quality publishing with higher standards, serve more scholars, publish more high-quality articles, and promote the development and progress of science. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to all contributors to SS. We look forward to all your continuous support to help us to build a better journal, and we expect to get more support from scientists and researchers in this research field.