Address from the Editorial Office

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the first issue of Fuel Cells – From Fundamentals to Systems in 2024. With this issue the journal is heading off for volume 24.

We hope this year we can continue to bring more excellent research in electrochemical systems with a full spectrum of special and topical issues planned alongside regular issues.

We are happy to see the improvement of the journal's Impact Factor to 2.95, which is an achievement from the effort of everyone who contributed to the journal. With the expanded scopes for the journal from only fuel cell research to more broad electrochemical systems and fundamentals, we hope to see a steady growth of submission, publication and citations. This has already been shown by a 21% higher submission rate in 2023 than 2022.

As Special Issues (SI) and Topical Issues (TI) have proven as high impact facets of the journal from their start in 2001, and related publications always show up among the top-ten downloaded Fuel Cells – From Fundamentals to Systems articles.

There are few other possible topical issues in planning, including a Virtual Issue to honor Professor Dr. Ulrich Stimming, who stepped down as Editor-in-Chief in July 2023, but will still be an active member of the Editorial Office as Founding Editor.

Thus, we would like to say a special THANK YOU to all the Guest Editors of both Topical and Special Issues, for inviting and taking care of the publication of highest quality articles at the core interests of our readers.

We welcome ideas for Topical Issues to showcase research development in a particular field related to electrochemical processes and systems.

Although we have discovered some delays in the restructuring of the Editorial Office as well as the Editorial Board, let us welcome the new members of the Editorial Board, who joined us in the second half of 2023 and injected new energy and dynamics, as well as expertise to the Editorial Board. We will introduce them in the coming issues. The new members are from diverse geographic and expertise areas. We hope to work together to continue the work started by Prof. Dr. Stimming and enhance the impact of the journal even further.

They will work together with existing Editorial Board Members to serve the community and make some exciting changes.

Nevertheless, besides all efforts from the Editorial Office the future development of the journal will strongly depend on your activity in making the journal known to everybody in our community or by contributing to the journal as guest editors, reviewers or authors.

Thus, we are looking forward to your cooperation for Volume 23, 2024, and to receiving your contributions.

With kind regards,