A new fully open access journal devoted to surface science has opened its pages. Discover Surfaces, part of Springer Nature’s Discover series, published its inaugural editorial on 28 April 2026 as Volume 1, article number 1, written by Manjiri A. Mahadadalkar and Ashutosh Kumar Singh. The editorial lays out the journal’s ambitions: to serve as a broad-scope home for research across all aspects of surface sciences, welcoming both major breakthroughs and the incremental advances that, in the editors’ words, each play a pivotal role in the sustainable progress of the field.
To explain why a dedicated journal matters, the editorial reaches back to the origins of the discipline. Agnes Pockels is widely recognized as one of the earliest contributors to surface science, and her story is striking precisely because of where it began: at a kitchen table. Working outside formal academic settings, she developed simple yet effective methods for measuring surface tension, and her self-directed investigations helped shape the foundations of the physical chemistry of liquid interfaces. It is a reminder, the editors write, that transformative science can begin anywhere.
The other foundational pillar the editorial highlights is Irving Langmuir’s paper “The Adsorption of Gases on Plane Surfaces of Glass, Mica, and Platinum,” which introduced a quantitative model for monolayer adsorption. That study, the editors note, laid a foundation for surface and colloid chemistry and produced the well-known Langmuir adsorption isotherm. A century later, the isotherm remains a cornerstone of modern surface science, and the field it seeded grew into a distinct discipline, with studies of adsorption and catalysis built on the concepts Langmuir formalized.
From those classical beginnings, the editorial traces the technological leaps that turned surface science into the atomically precise field it is today. Progress accelerated significantly with advances in ultra-high vacuum systems and with the development of powerful surface-sensitive techniques such as Low-Energy Electron Diffraction and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. These methods made it possible to probe and study surfaces at the atomic level. The invention of the Scanning Tunneling Microscope then transformed the field again by enabling direct imaging of individual atoms.
Today, the editorial describes surface science as a vibrant and interdisciplinary enterprise, connecting areas as varied as nanotechnology, materials science, catalysis, energy storage and generation, thin films, biomedical implants, biosensors, and drug delivery systems. Two-dimensional materials such as graphene and MXenes have driven exciting progress in electronics, photonics, and sensing applications, according to the editorial. Surface science, the editors write, plays a key role in developing sustainable technologies and improving modern devices. Research in the field continues to expand, with growing focus on understanding the stability, reproducibility, and scalability of surfaces, the functionalization of surfaces, and the mechanisms of reactions occurring at interfaces.
One of the most candid passages in the editorial confronts a persistent gap between ideal and reality. Real surfaces, the editors observe, are often complex and dynamic, behaving quite differently under real operating conditions than they do in ideal laboratory settings. Studies supported by advanced techniques such as in-situ and operando spectroscopy and microscopy are now allowing scientists to study surfaces in action and to bridge that gap. The editorial also notes that combining experiments with computational modeling and machine learning is accelerating discoveries and offering new insights, making surface sciences an exciting research area.
Against that backdrop, the new journal states its position plainly: Discover Surfaces invites studies that embrace this complexity. The editors describe the journal as a habitat for surface-science-related research in all its aspects, one that can serve as an interface for science, policy, and society. The scope, spelled out in the editorial’s topics section, is deliberately wide. On the applications side it lists biomedical and healthcare uses, catalysis, coatings, energy storage, nanotechnology, and sensors. Characterization of surfaces spans diffraction, microscopy, spectroscopy, and vibrational analysis. Interfaces are covered across solid, liquid, and gas phases, while surface properties include chemical and mechanical, electrical and dielectric, electronic and magnetic, optical and plasmonic, and thermodynamic behavior. Structure and morphology round out the list, encompassing assembly and functionalization, adsorption, desorption and deposition, defects and vacancies, and reshaping and reconstruction. The full topic list is available on the journal’s aims and scope page.
The editorial also describes how the journal will be run. The Editorial Board of Discover Surfaces brings together experienced researchers with diverse research backgrounds, reflecting the broad scope of the journal, and board members are actively involved in its development by handling submitted manuscripts, promoting the journal within their professional communities, and proposing or guest-editing Topical Collections. The board is expected to keep expanding, and the editorial extends an open invitation to researchers who wish to help shape the journal’s future. On the publishing side, the journal is fully open access, and the inaugural piece itself is freely downloadable as a PDF.
For prospective authors, the editorial details what kinds of contributions are welcome. Discover Surfaces welcomes various article types, including full-length research articles as well as brief communications, comprehensive reviews, perspectives, and case studies, with submission guidelines detailing manuscript preparation, formatting, length, and submission procedures. The journal also plans to publish guest-edited Topical Collections focused on specialized hot topics relevant to all aspects of surface science research. Notably, the editors tie the venture to a broader agenda: at Discover Surfaces, they write, the team is committed to sustainable development and welcomes papers that address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. For a field whose reach extends from kitchen-table experiments to atomically resolved imaging, the message of the inaugural editorial is that every contribution counts toward the field’s sustainable progress, and that surfaces, the places where materials meet the world, deserve a venue of their own.
Subject of Research: Launch of the open access journal Discover Surfaces and the scope of modern surface science
Article Title: Inaugural editorial for Discover Surfaces
Article References: Mahadadalkar, M. A., & Singh, A. K. (2026). Inaugural editorial for Discover Surfaces. Discover Surfaces, 1(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44507-026-00002-w
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: 10.1007/s44507-026-00002-w
Keywords: surface science, Discover Surfaces, open access, Langmuir adsorption isotherm, Agnes Pockels, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy, X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy, two-dimensional materials, catalysis, operando spectroscopy, graphene, MXenes
News Source: Bethany Barker. (October 28, 2026). New Open Access Journal Discover Surfaces Launches with Inaugural Editorial. Scienmag.
