Conservation and Restoration of Metal Artifacts

Dear Colleagues,

The last decade has seen extensive research focus on implementation of a number of spectroscopic, electrochemical and imaging techniques, green materials and technologies, digital tools and methods for the conservation and restoration of metal artifacts. Both terrestrial and marine metal artifacts are complicated to understand their original metal alloy composition, corrosion layers, and stability after excavation or treatment.  Routine practices and materials used for the storage, treatment, protection, display, and transport of these artifacts are today deemed either as not safe or with a great impact on the environment. There is a concerted effort by conservation professionals to understand the carbon footprint of the materials they use in their practices so as to help make better choices to reduce their impact on the environment.

The goal of this Special Issue is to collect papers (original research articles and review papers) to give insights about these new applications with the aim to better understand the alloy compositions and corrosion matrix of metal artifacts from different environments, new materials or technologies for the remedial conservation of metal artifacts, new materials or methods for storage, display, or transport of metal artifacts, in situ conservation of metal artifacts.

This Special Issue will welcome manuscripts that link the following themes:

1. Museum environment and climate for metal artifacts;
2. Green materials and technologies for conservation and restoration of metal artifacts;
3. Non-invasive portable analytical techniques for in situ analysis and diagnosis of metal alloys and surfaces, as well as the monitoring of metals artifacts in their surrounding environment;
4. In situ conservation of metal artifacts;
5. Characterization studies of metal artifacts including corrosion matrix.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Prof. Dr. Vasilike Argyropoulos
Dr. Maria Giannoulaki
Dr. Elodie Guilminot
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Heritage is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• metal artifacts
• green materials and technologies
• noninvasive portable analytical techniques
• museum environment
• in situ conservation
• material characterization