Peer review declaration

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering have been peer reviewed through processes administered by Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: single-blind (the identity of reviewers is not known by the authors) • Criteria used by reviewers: The papers were reviewed for scientific content, the novelty of information, language correctness and presentation. The reviewers were instructed to evaluate the papers according to a review form with the following sections: originality, relationship to literature, organization of manuscript (including quality of communication, clarity of results), information included in the abstract, English usage, and if the manuscript is free of commercialism. Then the reviewers had to fill in a box with comments and suggestions for authors. In addition, the reviewers had to propose the paper to be published, revised or rejected. The comments were sent to authors (by the track director), and the authors had to update their papers according to the reviewers’ comments and upload them again. The conference track director took the final decision of acceptance (or rejection) only after the authors had corrected their papers. • Conference submission management system: Open Conference System (www.siarcongress.eu). • Number of submissions received: 199 • Number of submissions sent for review: 98 • Number of submissions accepted: 84 • Acceptance Rate: 42% • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers: 71 Plagiarism check system: Sistemantiplagiat.ro (papers were uploaded on the server, then the report was downloaded) Contact person for queries: Dinu COVACIU, Transilvania University of Brasov, Romania, email: dinu.covaciu@unitbv.ro