In 2008 it became an open access journal through the sponsorship of the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS).

The journal is international; it is managed by NIMS, which was joined in 2014 by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa).

[2] The journal covers all aspects of materials science, including theoretical analysis, synthesis and processing, phase and structure analyses, characterization, properties, engineering, and applications.

[4] STAM is indexed by major databases including the Astrophysics Data System, Chemical Abstracts Service, Inspec, PubMed, Science Citation Index, Scopus and Web of Science.

[5] STAM has published articles and editorials by the Nobel Laureates Ei-ichi Negishi,[6] Heinrich Rohrer[7] and Dan Shechtman.