KONA Powder and Particle Journal No. 35 (2018) 1–2/Doi:10.14356/kona.2018022 Editorial

Copyright © 2018 The Author. Published by Hosokawa Powder Technology Foundation. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1

Editorʼs Preface

Kikuo Okuyama, Editor-in-ChiefHiroshima University, Japan

As the Editor-in-Chief, I am pleased to introduce the KONA Powder & Particle Journal, Issue No.35. Continuing the years’ tradition, this issue contains high quality reviews and original research articles focusing on the industry- oriented powder and particle technology. It is clear that continuous improvement has always been one of the spirits of this Journal to meet the demand of the powder and particle technology society. Three years ago, this journal was introduced to the J-STAGE (Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator Electronic) to support better transmission to the readers, continued with the introduction of the Open Access policy last year.

The Editorial Committee, consisting of three editorial boards located in Europe, America, and Asia/Oceania, re-ceived more than 50 high-quality articles this year and anticipate to receive more in the future. To accommodate this trend, the Editorial Manager® (EM) system was used to facilitate easy manuscript submission, reviewing, and tracking. The EM system allows the submitted articles to be immediately assessed by the Editorial Committee members, thereby allowing the contributors to receive the decisions at their earliest opportunity and have sufficient time to improve their manuscripts.

The increasing number of articles received by the editorial office reflects the growing research efforts concerning powder and particle technology. The interest ranges from the fields of basic sciences of physics, chemistry, and biol-ogy, to the applied fields such as chemical and process engineering. This is in conjunction with the vast-growing applications of powder and particle technology, such as heat-resistant materials, memory and recording media, photo functional materials, and energy-supplying devices. The demand for high performance materials is escalating even more with the emerge of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. This is something that needs to be anticipated and further explored by the powder and particle technology community. Researchers and engineers in this field need to continuously develop efficient, scalable, and environmentally friendly manufacturing processes for high performance materials. This also includes post-processing handling technology to realize fully functional-ized materials with high purity. This is the message that we tried to convey through this year’s issue.

Our aim is to introduce high quality research throughout the world. In-line with the rapid advancement of the powder and particle technology, we attempt to increase the publication frequency of this journal in the near future while keeping the quality of the published articles. In the meantime, I hope this issue would be a valuable platform for the discourse of powder and particle technology advancement.

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Jusuke Hidaka, emeritus professor of Doshisha University, Japan, for his con-tinuous dedication as the former Editor-in-Chief of KONA Powder and Particle Journal.

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Reviewer Appreciation

I express our gratitude to the reviewers for the publication of this KONA Powder and Particle Journal. Thanks to the generous contributions of the volunteer reviewers as well as the interest of researchers in our journal, the num-ber of submission to this journal is increasing after the registration on the major international journal platforms and its level is further improving. Because of the limited space of this annual journal, the number of papers published there is regrettably rather restricted. Therefore the papers of good quality need to be selected for the journal and further improved and refined by the reviewing.

The editorial team of KONA Journal would like to take this opportunity to gratefully acknowledge the reviewers here and deeply appreciate their valuable time and professional contributions to the KONA Journal. We apologize to any reviewer who may have inadvertently been omitted from this list. We are sincerely grateful to all who have been of any assistance to the publication of this journal.

BAŁDYGA, JerzyBISCANS, BéatriceCASTRO, José Adilson deCOPPENS, Marc-OlivierFURSE, CynthiaGARCIA-CONTRERAS, LucilaGOTOH, KuniakiGRADOŃ, LeonHICKEY, AnthonyHUANG, Ching-ChungINOUE, YoheiKANDA, YoshiteruKANO, Junya

KAWASAKI, AkiraKLINZING, George E.KWADE, ArnoMAKINO, HisaoMATSUSAKA, ShujiMEESTERS, GabrielMILANI, Paolo MORI, YasushigeMOUDGIL, BrijNAGAO, DaisukeNAKAMURA, HideyaOKUYAMA, Kikuo PURI, VirendraRAJAMANI, Raj

RASTEIRO, Maria da GraçaROSATO, Anthony D. SAITO, FumioSAKAI, MikioSEN, SurajitSHINTO, HiroyukiSHIRAKAWA, YoshiyukiSUZUKI, HiroshiTAVARES, Luis MarceloTOKORO, ChiharuTSUJI, Takuya VALVERDE, Jose Manuel YOKOYAMA, ToyokazuYOSHIDA, Mikio

Kikuo OkuyamaEditor-in-ChiefProf. emeritus, Hiroshima UniversityOctober 2017