About Nano Futures

Nano Futures™ publishes innovative, urgent work that reflects the diverse and multidisciplinary fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology, bringing together researchers from across physics, chemistry, biomedicine, materials science, engineering, and industry.

Built upon IOP Publishing’s longstanding reputation in serving nanoscience, but with a forward-looking approach, Nano Futures publishes work that is anticipated to set the direction of new and emerging fields with the expectation of long-term scientific value and impact.

While the scope of Nano Futures extends to all cutting-edge areas of fundamental and applied nanoscience, the Editorial Board particularly encourages submissions in the following subdisciplines:

Nanobiotechnology: Including, but not limited to, nanoparticles for therapeutic and diagnostic applications (including targeted drug delivery systems), DNA/RNA origami, bioelectronics interfaces, DNA based motors, nanomaterials based artificial enzymes (nanozymes), hydrogel materials and antiviral systems.

Quantum Nanomaterials Phenomenon: Growth and control of qubit systems, optically active qubit systems, quantum error correction, quantum noise minimisation, magnetic Skyrmion materials, quantum interference, quantum-sheet films, quantum tomography.

Nano Energy: Nanomaterials for photovoltaic application, tandem solar cells, living photovoltaic systems. Nanotechnology for batteries and anodes. Fuel cells. Nano-and-photocatalytic materials, metal-organic-framework (MOF)-based nanomaterials for energy and catalysis applications.

Nanoelectronics: Flexible, stretchable, and wearable arrays and materials, Josephson junctions, nanophotonic materials and devices, single molecule junctions, transistor arrays, Van der Waals semiconducting materials, electron-phonon coupling.

Nano and Low-Dimensional Materials: Novel fabrication techniques and reproducible upscale of graphene and other 2D Materials. Moiré photonic superlattices and superconducting materials, twisted and stacked 2D materials, application of properties of black phosphorus, 2D chalcogenides, MXenes and (hexagonal) boron-nitride.

Computational Nanomaterial Design: Electronic structure, dynamics, multi-scale modelling, digital twins, data science, machine learning, deep learning, optimisation, inverse design, interference.

Nano Futures is a highly selective journal positioned at the pinnacle of IOP Publishing’s nanoscience family of titles that also includes Nanotechnology and Nano Express.

• Fast-track peer review with a median 2022 receipt-to-first decision time of just 29 days (2022).
• Accepted articles available online within 24 hours.
• All articles published will be subject to bespoke marketing and promotional campaigns from our dedicated journal team.
• Fully indexed in Scopus and Web of Science, and use of Altmetrics to enhance article discoverability.
• Society owned: IOP Publishing is a leading society publisher of advanced physics research. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are invested in the Institute of Physics, helping to support the research, education, and outreach of Physics across the UK and around the world.

Nano Futures welcomes submissions of the following article types:

• Letters: These concise articles (typically around 5,000 words) report breakthrough research findings, either in terms of the fundamental science presented, or some novel application of a nanoscale system. Letters in Nano Futures represent a conceptual advance and as such are subject to rapid peer-review that is overseen by the journal’s Editorial Board.
• Original Research Papers: Articles of unlimited length that present new and novel research findings. The expectation is that these articles are of long-term scientific value and help set the direction of nanoscale research into the future.

**Both Letters and Original Research Papers submitted to Nano Futures must include an ‘insights statement’ in the cover letter. This paragraph, of no more than 300 words, must outline why the research is novel and discuss implications of the research on the future direction of the field. The ‘insights statement’ will be used by IOP Publishing’s peer review team to determine the significance and novelty of the research presented in the Letter/Original Research Paper.**

• Topical Reviews: Comprehensive articles that provide an accurate and up-to-date status of research being undertaken across a given research discipline. It is anticipated that review articles will collate the very latest global research, and combine this into a single article, that will be of great use to the nanotechnology community more broadly.
• Perspectives: Brief commentaries that highlight the impact, wider implications, and direction that research breakthroughs may take. Despite their relatively short length (typically between 3,000 and 4,000 words), perspectives represent authoritative discussions regarding the future direction of a timely research area.
• Roadmaps: Commissioned and collaborative articles that capture a snapshot of the most recent developments within the field, and with the aim of identifying the most outstanding research challenges and emerging opportunities presented. Roadmaps articles comprise experts from across multiple research disciplines, sharing their viewpoints to articulate a clear vision that best reflects the dynamic, interdisciplinary, and multifaceted nature of the research area.

Authors of all articles are required upon submission to disclose any potential conflict of interest (e.g. employment, consulting fees, industrial research contracts, stock ownership, equity interests, patent-licensing arrangements, honoraria, etc) in their covering letter. If the article is subsequently accepted for publication, this information should be included in an acknowledgments section. Authors should also note that the journal fully endorses the principles embodied in the Declaration of Helsinki. All investigations involving humans must be conducted in accordance with these principles and in accordance with local statutory requirements. Articles relying on clinical trials should quote the trial registration number at the end of the abstract. We also encourage the registration of such studies in a public trials registry prior to publication of the results in the journal. All investigations involving animal experimentation must be conducted in conformity with the Guiding Principles for Research Involving Animals and Human Beings as adopted by The American Physiological Society.

The following summary describes the peer review process for Nano Futures, using the ANSI/NISO Standard Terminology for Peer Review:

• Identity transparency: single-anonymous, double-anonymous (author choice)
• Reviewer interacts with: Editor

Our Publishing Support website provides more information on our reviewing process as well as checklists in both English and Chinese language to help authors prepare their manuscripts for submission.

To ensure that the journal’s very strict editorial criteria are upheld, every submission is personally overseen by a member of the Editorial Board who, following a preliminary assessment for suitability, is responsible for reviewer selection and the final editorial decision. Articles can be rejected without full review after this initial assessment by the editors.

If an article is not accepted for publication, we may offer the author the opportunity to transfer their submission to other suitable journals we publish.

We work with our authors to help make their work as easy to discover as possible. Nano Futures is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:

• Baidu Scholar
• Chemical Abstracts Service
• CNKI
• Ei Compendex
• Inspec
• J-Gate
• JST
• MyScienceWork
• NASA Astrophysics Data System
• Naver Academic
• R Discovery
• Scilit
• Scopus
• Scite
• Semantic Scholar
• Wanfang Data
• Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded, Current Contents Engineering, Computing & Technology, Current Contents Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, Essential Science Indicators)
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