As always, when the year comes to an end, it is time to look back. What did we achieve this year, how did the journal develop? And what are our plans for the new year?At Advanced Functional Materials we are happy to look back on many positive news. Submissions further developed strongly. In 2021 we passed the mark of 13,000 submissions for the first time ever, this year we passed 14,000 already at the end of November and it is highly likely that we will receive more than 15,000 manuscripts this year. 15,000 manuscripts means more than 40 manuscripts per day. I recall, when I took over as Editor-in-Chief in 2012, we were at ca. 11 papers per day. Quadruplication within just ten years. This exemplifies the changes not just in science. Globalization, higher speed in every aspect of our modern life, and with this the need to become more efficient, and faster, in streamlined processes. All of this also happened in scientific publishing, in our editorial processes, since we certainly could not quadruple our staff.Nevertheless, publishing remains a people's business. And all our efforts would be meaningless without this group of highly talented and dedicated colleagues that I have the honor to lead at Advanced Functional Materials. It is a global group, based in offices around the science hubs of the world, and they are not only coping with the business needs, but they are still and foremost maintaining the important direct contact and exchange with our most important assets: with you, our readers and authors. To stay in touch with you, the materials research community, is the basis for our ongoing success, for the growing submissions and the growing Impact Factor, which has climbed to 19.924 by now, and for all the opportunities that we create here at Wiley to start new initiatives and projects to further enhance our offerings to you. Let me mention just a few of them.To enhance transparency of our editorial decision-making process, we introduced a workflow where reviewers of manuscripts at Advanced Functional Materials are notified of the editorial decision for manuscripts they reviewed immediately after the decision is made. The other, anonymized, reviewer reports are also shared with them. This gives our reviewers valuable insight into their peers' evaluation of the manuscript and additional guidance as to the journal's standards. The feedback we have received from our reviewers indicates they are appreciative not just of the information provided in the notification but also how it acknowledges the important contribution they make to upholding our stringent requirements.
