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Impact factor: 4.046*
Time to first decision (all decisions): 21.0 days**
Time to first decision (peer reviewed only): 29.0 days***
CiteScore: 6.1****
Editor-in-Chief: Alfred Crosby
Indexed in MEDLINE
Open access publishing options available
Scope
Soft Matter provides a unique forum for the communication of significant advances in interdisciplinary soft matter research. There is a particular focus on the interface between chemistry, physics, materials science, biology and chemical engineering. Research may report new soft materials or phenomena, encompass their design, synthesis, and use in new applications; or provide fundamental insight and observations on their behaviour. Experimental, theoretical and computational soft matter approaches are encouraged.
The scope of Soft Matter covers the following.
- Bulk soft matter assemblies, including colloids, granular matter, liquid crystals, networks, polymers, hybrids and active matter
- Soft nanotechnology and self-assembly
- Biological aspects of soft matter
- Surfaces, interfaces and interactions
- Mechanistic insights and modelling
Soft Matter Lectureship
This annually presented lectureship recognises early career researchers, typically within 10 years of attaining their PhD or equivalent degree, who have made significant contributions to the field of soft matter.
Find out more about eligibility, how to nominate, nomination deadlines, and see all the winners of this award.
Meet the team
Find out who is on the editorial and advisory boards for the Soft Matter journal.
Editor-in-Chief
Alfred Crosby, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Associate editors
Tommy Angelini, University of Florida, USA
Ewa Górecka, Warsaw University, Poland
Jianbin Huang, Peking University, China
Guruswamy Kumaraswamy, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, India
Sanat Kumar, Columbia University, USA
Zhihong Nie, Fudan University, China
Amy Shen, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan
Emanuela Zaccarelli, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Xuehua Zhang,University of Alberta, Canada
Editorial board members
Lorna Dougan, University of Leeds
Dave Adams, University of Glasgow, UK
Dongchan Ahn, The Dow Chemical Company, USA
Markus Antonietti, Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany
Omar Azzaroni, UNLP, Argentina
Piero Baglioni, University of Florence, Italy
Anna Balazs, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Arindam Banerjee, Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, India
Madivala Basavaraj, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India
Patricia Bassereau, Physico Chimie Curie Lab, France
Jasna Brujic, New York University, USA
Jacinta Conrad, University of Houston, USA
Vincent Craig, Australian National University, Australia
Emanuela Del Gado, Georgetown University, USA
Jan Dhont, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
Carmen Domene, University of Bath, UK
Zahra Fakhraai, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Glenn Fredrickson, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA
Valeria Garbin, TU Delft, The Netherlands
Jian Ping Gong, Hokkaido University, Japan
Ian Hamley, University of Reading, UK
Lucio Isa, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Paul Janmey, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Gijsje Koenderink, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
Daniela Kraft, Leiden University, Netherlands
Eugenia Kumacheva, University of Toronto, Canada
Oleg Lavrentovich, Kent State University, USA
Junbai Li, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Christos Likos, University of Vienna, Austria
Dongsheng Liu, Tsinghua University, China
Tom McLeish, University of York, UK
Bradley Olsen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
Rossana Pasquino, The University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Susan Perkin, University of Oxford, UK
Sarah Perry, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA
Darrin Pochan, University of Delaware, USA
David Quéré, ESPCI, France
Sriram Ramaswamy, Indian Institute of Science, India
Meital Reches, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
Alejandro Rey, McGill University, Canada
Connie Roth, Emory University, USA
Michael Rubinstein, Duke University, USA
Sam Safran, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
Takamasa Sakai, The University of Tokyo, Japan
Peter Schurtenberger, Lund University, Sweden
Kathleen Stebe, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Joakim Stenhammar, Lund University, Sweden
Howard Stone, Princeton University, USA
Hajime Tanaka, University of Tokyo, Japan
Evelyne van Ruymbeke, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Jan Vermant, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Petia Vlahovska, Northwestern University, USA
Dimitris Vlassopoulos, FORTH-IESL, Greece
Yilin Wang, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Catherine Whitby, Massey University, New Zealand
Tim White, University of Colorado, USA
Duyang Zang, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China
Maria Southall, Executive Editor, Journals, ORCID 0000-0002-7935-6231
Laura Ghandhi, Deputy Editor, Journals
Emily Skinner, Editorial Production Manager, Journals
Sean Browner, Assistant Editor, Journals
Eleanor Clifford, Assistant Editor, Journals
Alison Winder, Assistant Editor, Journals
Basita Javeed, Editorial Assistant, Journals
Allison Holloway, Publishing Assistant, Journals
Sam Keltie, Publisher, Journals, ORCID 0000-0002-9369-8414
Article templates
To help authors publish their research with us we host our Soft Matter LaTeX template in the Overleaf authoring tool. Overleaf simplifies LaTeX authorship by enabling collaborators to easily prepare and edit their manuscripts with realtime format previewing, simple document sharing and collaboration, and user support and LaTeX help.
With one-click, the PDF of your manuscript and a ZIP file of the LaTeX source files are sent directly to the Soft Matter submission system without the need to download and re-upload files, making the process quicker and easier.
A free introductory course is available to authors who are new to LaTeX and Overleaf. Our Microsoft Word templates are located in our author guidelines.
Journal guidelines
There are no specific requirements regarding formatting of submissions; we recommend using the Royal Society of Chemistry template but this is not a requirement for submission. All articles accepted for publication in our journals are edited and typeset to our house style by professional editors; we will format the final publication for you.
The following guidelines are journal specific. For general guidance on preparing an article please visit our Prepare your article and Resources for authors pages, the content of which is relevant to all of our journals.
Open access publishing options
Soft Matter is a hybrid journal and gives authors the choice of publishing their research either via the traditional subscription-based model or instead by choosing our gold open access option.
Gold open access
For authors who want to publish their article gold open access, Soft Matter charges an article processing charge (APC) of £1800 (+ any applicable tax). Our APC is all-inclusive and makes your article freely available online immediately, permanently, and includes your choice of Creative Commons licence (CC BY or CC BY-NC) at no extra cost. It is not a submission charge, so you only pay if your article is accepted for publication.
Learn more about publishing open access.
Read & Publish
If your institution has a Read & Publish agreement in place with the Royal Society of Chemistry, APCs for gold open access publishing in Soft Matter may already be covered.
Check if your institution is already part of our Read & Publish community.
Please use your official institutional email address to submit your manuscript; this helps us to identify if you are eligible for Read & Publish or other APC discounts.
Traditional subscription model
Authors can also publish in Soft Matter via the traditional subscription model without needing to pay an APC. Articles published via this route are available to institutions and individuals who subscribe to the journal. Our standard licence allows you to make the accepted manuscript of your article freely available after a 12-month embargo period. This is known as the green route to open access.
Readership information
Soft Matter has a global circulation and interdisciplinary audience.
- Physicists
- Biophysicists
- Bioengineers
- Biological scientists
- Biochemists
- Chemical engineers
- Materials scientists
- Surface scientists
- Physical, organic and theoretical chemists
Subscription information
Soft Matter is part of RSC Gold and Materials Science subscription packages.
Online only 2023: ISSN 1744-6848, £1,641 / $2,891
*2021 Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics, 2022)
**The median time from submission to first decision including manuscripts rejected without peer review from the previous calendar year
***The median time from submission to first decision for peer reviewed manuscripts from the previous calendar year
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