Editorial: The April 2022 cover paper

J Mater Sci E D I T O R I AL Editorial Editorial: The April 2022 cover paper C. Barry Carter1,* 1 Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06239, USA Ó The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2022 The cover for the April 2022 issues of the Journal of Materials Science comes from the paper by Vigor et al. [1] on the microstructural development of Portland cement, which appeared in the 4th February 2022 issue (#8). The paper was handled by Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Grant Norton. The paper by Vigor et al. was included in a Topical Collection with other papers on ‘Ceramics’, which is Dean Norton’s favorite topic. In fact, the subject of Portland cement appears in chapters 2, 7, 25 and 27 of the textbook on Ceramic Materials [2]: it is a complicated material with enormous relevance to infrastructure of buildings, highways, etc., with 2.1 billion tons produced globally in 2021 rising to an anticipated 2.7 billion tons in 2027. Of course, processing cement also impacts the global climate. The paper was published Open Access, but it does also have a SharedIt link like all articles in JMS (h ttps://rdcu.be/cHSIz) and had already been accessed 569 times just 18 days after it appeared online. (All papers published in JMS are free-to-read using the SharedIt link from the moment that they appear Address correspondence to E-mail: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-022-07079-x online with their permanent DOI.) The paper is 18 published pages long, which is a few pages longer than the average for JMS; we do prefer complete archival papers. The authors not only reference recent papers but have included early references such as Bogue’s 1929 classic [3] (which we unfortunately omitted in the textbook). As is the case for all papers published in JMS (OA or not), this paper has color throughout— both in the hard copy and the pdf. Figure 3 illustrates so effectively why JMS uses color throughout all the papers. The paper is a classic example of state-of-theart characterization of a complex material, using advanced data analysis (with widely available computer methods) to understand how a material changes with time during processing. A few words about the cover figure: it is simple, and the meaning is immediately understood. As a schematic, it works. There are many other impressive figures showing how the microstructure changes with arrows showing how they progress, but you do need to read the paper to understand their J Mater Sci meaning—the cover image is very easily understood, and there is neither a number nor a letter on it! So for the students, if you weren’t convinced before that cement is a ceramic-now we hope you are. of Portland cement. J Mater Sci 57:4952–4969. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s10853-022-06952-z [2] Carter CB, Norton MG (2013) Ceramic materials: science & engineering, 2nd edn. Springer, NY) [3] Bogue RH (1929) Calculation of the compounds in Portland cement. Ind Eng Chem Anal Ed 1:192–197. https://doi.org/10. 1021/ac50068a006 References [1] Vigor JE, Bernal SA, Xiao X, Privos JL (2022) Time-resolved 3D characterisation of early-age microstructural development Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.  (...truncated)