EPJ E Highlight - EPJ E: Soft Matter and Biological Physics – the past and the future

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Published on 08 May 2026

A new editorial in EPJ E reflects on the journal’s role in uniting diverse soft-matter communities, and anticipates the challenges of maintaining interdisciplinary dialogue as the field expands.

Soft matter encompasses a diverse array of structures, including liquid crystals, polymers and biopolymers, and even living cells and tissues. While they are often complex, all of these materials display extremely strong responses to weak perturbations, including mechanical, chemical, and electrical influences. Increasingly, these properties are being explored across a vast array of applications, driving deeper questions about how the fascinating behaviour of soft materials is linked to their constituent molecular parts.

First founded in 2000, EPJ E: Soft Matter and Biological Physics has long been a cornerstone of soft matter research. In one of the first papers of the EPJ E 25th Anniversary Collection: Past Insights, Present Voices, Future Horizons, Jean‑François Joanny at Collège de France, together with Günter Reiter at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, reflect on its prolific past while anticipating the challenges and opportunities it will likely face in the future.

Before EPJ E was founded, soft matter research was carried out by largely separate communities. But as the journal widened its scope, its studies have become increasingly collaborative, drawing researchers from physics, chemistry, biology, and engineering into interdisciplinary work. In recent years, EPJ E has experienced significant expansion, especially as the applications of soft materials have extended into industrial and medical research. Today, the journal has become a melting pot of ideas where researchers from diverse communities can present and discuss both controversial ideas and well-founded theories, and comment on published studies.

Looking forward, Joanny and Reiter recognise a growing challenge in ensuring efficient and comprehensive communication between disciplines. In the face of this diversification, a unifying platform for communication and exchange will be more important than ever. The duo remains confident that EPJ E will continue to contribute meaningful scientific progress in the wider field of soft matter, while adapting to the needs of its numerous contributing communities.