About Nano-Micro Letters

Nano-Micro Letters

Nano-Micro Letters (NML) is a peer-reviewed, international, interdisciplinary and open-access scientific journal based in Shanghai, China. It was launched in 2009 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and is published by Springer, in the SpringerOpen family, on behalf of the university. The journal covers the science, experiments, engineering, technologies and applications of nano- and microscale structures and systems, across physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, pharmacy and their expanding interfaces. Its print ISSN is 2311-6706 and its electronic ISSN is 2150-5551. Indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded, Scopus, EI and PubMed Central, and ranked in the first quartile of its fields, it has become one of China's most influential nanotechnology journals — a Shanghai university title whose articles are read and cited by researchers working on nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, energy devices and biomedical nanotechnology around the world.

Founded in Shanghai in 2009

The journal was established in 2009, launched by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, one of China's leading research universities, and published in partnership with Springer. Its editorial office is at the university in Shanghai — the publisher's address is given as Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai 200240 — placing the journal physically inside the institution that owns it. That ownership matters to how the journal works. Nano-Micro Letters is owned by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which covers the publishing costs, so authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge. In an open-access landscape in which authors at many journals pay substantial fees to make their work free to read, a university-sponsored model in which the sponsoring institution absorbs the cost is a distinctive feature, and it is stated plainly on the journal's own site.

The editor-in-chief is Yafei Zhang of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, a professor associated with the university's Research Institute of Micro/Nano Science and Technology and its Thin Film and Microfabrication Technology Laboratory of the Ministry of Education. Having a working laboratory director at the sponsoring university lead the journal ties its editorial direction closely to active research in micro- and nanofabrication in Shanghai, rather than to a distant commercial editorial office.

From a few sub-nanometres to a few hundred micrometres

The journal's scope is defined by a length scale. It focuses on structures and systems with at least one dimension ranging from a few sub-nanometres to a few hundreds of micrometres — the territory in which the behaviour of matter is governed neither by single atoms alone nor by bulk engineering, but by the structures built between those extremes. Within that territory the journal is deliberately interdisciplinary, welcoming work from physics, chemistry, biology, material science and pharmacy, and from the interfaces between them.

The journal places particular emphasis on what it calls the bottom-up approach along the length scale from nano to micro. Its reasoning, stated in its own aims, is that the key for nanotechnology to reach industrial applications is to assemble, to modify and to control nanostructures at the micro scale. A nanoparticle, a nanowire or a two-dimensional sheet is a laboratory object; a device, a membrane, a battery electrode or a diagnostic chip that incorporates such objects in a controlled arrangement is a technology. Nano-Micro Letters aims, in its own words, to provide a publishing platform crossing the boundaries — from nano to micro, and from science to technologies. That crossing, between a discovery about a nanoscale structure and a working microscale system, is the editorial identity implied by the journal's hyphenated name.

Nanomaterials, energy devices and biomedical applications

In practice, the research published in the journal clusters around several recognisable themes. One is nanomaterials and nanocomposites themselves: their synthesis, characterisation and properties, including carbon-based materials such as graphene, metal oxides and hybrid composites. A second is electrochemical energy storage and conversion — batteries, supercapacitors and fuel cells, and the electrode materials, electrolytes and electrocatalysts that determine their efficiency, stability and energy density. Work on anodes, cathodes, capacitance and reactions such as oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution recurs throughout the journal's most-cited output, reflecting how central energy devices have become to applied nanoscience in China and internationally.

A third theme is optoelectronics and electronics, including perovskite structures and energy-conversion efficiency, electromagnetic shielding and interference protection, and sensing — gas and vapour sensors built from nanostructures are among the journal's highly cited review topics. A fourth is the biomedical interface: antibacterial nanoparticles, drug and diagnostic applications, and other uses in which nanoscale materials meet living systems. The publisher's summary of the journal's scope likewise stresses interdisciplinary research and development of nanomaterials and microstructures, with emphasis on applications in energy storage, environmental protection and biomedical fields. Environmental protection — remediation, sensing of pollutants and cleaner energy processes — completes a scope that is broad in discipline but disciplined in scale.

What the journal publishes

Nano-Micro Letters accepts three main article types, described on its own site. Papers report original research work and are not normally more than about 8,500 words; papers on nano- and microscale theories, technologies, engineering and applications should include representative results, and claims for the originality or novelty of the research should be clearly stated in the abstract. Rapid communications are brief, urgent announcements of significant advances or preliminary accounts of new work, of not more than about 3,500 words; for these, novelty and significance are the most important criteria, and authors must state briefly, in a covering letter, exactly why the work merits rapid publication. Review articles summarise accepted practice and report recent progress in selected areas; they are generally commissioned from experts by the editorial board, although prospective authors may submit an outline for preliminary consideration.

That mix — full research papers, a fast channel for urgent results, and commissioned reviews that map a field — is the standard architecture of a journal that wants both to record discoveries and to shape how a fast-moving field understands itself. The review programme is significant in practice: synthesising reviews on topics such as zinc oxide nanoparticles and graphene-based sensors are among the works through which many readers first encounter the journal.

Open access, sponsored by the university

All works published in Nano-Micro Letters are open access and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly credited. The journal encourages research librarians to list it among their libraries' electronic journal holdings. Because Shanghai Jiao Tong University sponsors the journal and covers its publishing costs, the open-access model does not depend on charging its own authors — a point the journal states explicitly: authors can publish without an article-processing charge.

The publisher presents the journal as a high-visibility venue, reporting very large monthly readership on its platform and a publication process measured in weeks rather than many months. For authors in nanoscience — a field in which priority, visibility and speed all matter — the combination of free-to-read, free-to-publish, and a large international platform explains much of the journal's attraction.

Indexing and standing

The journal is indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded, Scopus, EI and PubMed Central, among other services. Its standing in citation rankings has risen sharply. Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Journal Center reported that in the Journal Citation Reports released in June 2024, covering 2023 data, the university had 22 journals included in JCR, and that Nano-Micro Letters, with a 2023 Journal Impact Factor of 31.6 and a Q1 ranking, had entered the global top 100 journals for the first time, with four of the university's journals entering the top 500 worldwide. The same figure — an impact factor of 31.6 and a CiteScore of 42.4 for 2023 — is cited in the journal's own recruitment notices for its youth editorial board. Those are dated metrics for a specific reporting year, not a permanent property of the journal, but they document the point at which a journal founded in Shanghai in 2009 moved into the highest tier of international scientific publishing by citation impact.

Seed material for this profile likewise describes the journal as among China's most influential nanotechnology journals, and its indexing in SCI-Expanded and Scopus — the two services named in the seed — is confirmed by the journal's and university's own reporting.

A journal centre behind the title

Nano-Micro Letters is not an isolated title. It sits inside Shanghai Jiao Tong University's broader journal programme, coordinated through the university's Journal Center. The university describes a comprehensive plan, begun under its 14th Five-Year Planning in 2020, under which its academic journals have evolved into a cluster of internationalised, high-quality titles spanning multiple disciplines, regions and institutions, with the centre's mission being to bring its journals to the international stage and make an impact on scientific communities worldwide. Nano-Micro Letters is the flagship example of that strategy working: an English-language, open-access title, published with a major international publisher, edited from Shanghai, and competing directly with long-established Western journals in one of the most competitive fields in physical science.

The journal also invests in the next generation of editors. Its recruitment of a youth editorial board — the second such recruitment was publicised through Chinese science networks — invites younger researchers into the editorial process, a mechanism by which a journal renews its reviewer networks and its coverage of emerging subfields.

Who reads and uses it

The journal's readers are researchers in nanotechnology and materials science first of all: scientists synthesising nanomaterials, engineers building energy-storage and optoelectronic devices, chemists working on catalysis, and biomedical researchers exploring nanoscale tools for diagnosis and treatment. Its interdisciplinary scope means a single issue can be relevant to a battery laboratory, a sensor group and a nanomedicine team at once. For research managers and librarians, it is also a case study in the Chinese university-journal model — evidence that a sponsored, author-fee-free open-access journal can reach the top citation ranks in its field.

For readers outside the specialty, the journal is best understood as a window on where nanoscience is being turned into technology. Its emphasis on assembling and controlling nanostructures at the micro scale — on the step from a remarkable material to a usable device — means its pages track the practical frontier of the field: better electrodes, more sensitive sensors, more effective antibacterial materials and more efficient energy conversion.

How to access and cite it

The journal is published online through Springer's platform, under the SpringerOpen brand, and maintains its own journal site. Articles are published open access under the CC BY 4.0 licence, so any reader can download and reuse them with attribution. Its standard abbreviation is Nano-Micro Lett. Bibliographic records should use the print ISSN 2311-6706 or the electronic ISSN 2150-5551, and the journal has been published continuously from 2009 to the present. Authors considering submission should consult the journal's current author instructions for the three article types, their length guidance, and the requirement that rapid communications be justified in a covering letter.

Place in this directory

In this directory, Nano-Micro Letters is listed as a magazine and journal outlet from Shanghai, China — a classification that reflects its format as a periodical rather than the laboratory scale of its subject matter. It belongs to the generation of English-language scientific journals created by Chinese universities in the 2000s that have since become genuinely international publications. Founded in 2009, sponsored and owned by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, published with Springer, edited by Yafei Zhang, indexed in SCI-Expanded and Scopus, and devoted to research and reviews on nano- and microscale science and technology — from nanomaterials and nanoelectronics to energy devices and biomedical nanotechnology — it is one of the clearest examples in this batch of a Chinese journal that no longer merely reports a national research community to the world, but serves as one of the places where the world's research community reports to itself.