The publishing landscape is an ever-changing vista, in which journals must evolve in order to stay apace with the competition. Since its advent in 1968, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (JPhysD) — the successor to British Journal of Applied Physics — has endeavored to be innovative whilst meeting the needs of its audience; authors, referees and readers. 2015 continues to present opportunities for the journal to develop and improve the service we offer that audience.
In a letter to our readers [1] in Issue 1 of the current volume of JPhysD, Editor-in-Chief Giorgio Margaritondo (EPFL) and Publisher Tom Miller laid out their vision for the journal and some of our key initiatives for 2015 to recognise the changing landscape of applied physics.
“With an Impact Factor of 2.521, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics is one of the leading broad scope applied physics titles for primary research articles. We remain resolute in bringing you innovative and high quality scientific research from leading authors in applied physics and we must adapt and change to reflect the ever-changing publishing needs of applied physicists. Here, we wish to introduce a suite of ideas we intend to implement over the coming year, which we hope will serve you, as a reader, author and referee, in achieving your scientific and professional goals.”
Firstly, we wanted to recognise the extraordinary effort and dedication of our referees with the installation of an Advisory Panel of outstanding referees, specifically appointed for their excellent history of reviews for the journal. This panel will support the Editorial Board and the Editorial Office in managing the peer review of papers submitted to the journal, thereby providing our authors with a more efficient service. As Giorgio and Tom state:
We are keen to offer recognition to these outstanding referees, who currently remain largely unrecognised by the community. It is with pleasure that we announce the installation of our Advisory Panel which will be made up of these outstanding referees, and thus publicly recognise, for the first time, their contribution to the journal.
In addition, we decided to introduce an exciting new subject section in Renewable Energy and Resources. Physics plays a key role in this area but no physics journal currently bridges the gap between supplying energy in an efficient and cost effective manner and minimising damage to the planet’s delicate ecosystems in a targeted way. As Giorgio and Tom note in the editorial:
With this section, we intend to publish cutting-edge articles by leading authors at the interface of physics and the biological and chemical sciences in developing solutions to these 21st Century challenges.
The third change we will introduce over the next twelve months aims to increase the amount of commissioned content appearing in JPhysD, be it Topical Reviews, Special Issues or Roadmaps. We are working hard with the Editorial Board to identify the most exciting areas of applied physics research in order to commission the most interesting and relevant content for the future. We are especially delighted to be working with Christian Eggeling (University of Oxford) and Mark Bates (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry) on a Roadmap on super-resolution microscopy, which will pull together the thoughts of leading scientists about the direction in which their field is heading.
We leave you now with some words from our Publisher and Editor-in-Chief:
All that remains is to say thank you all for contributing to JPhysD either as an author publishing your work in the journal, a referee whose reviewing we rely on to ensure the papers we publish are high enough quality, or simply as a reader interested in the broad scientific output we publish. If you have any comments or suggestions for the journal, we encourage you to contact the journal at jphysd@iop.org.
We hope you will continue to support the journal and we look forward to working with you.
[1] Tom Miller and Giorgio Margaritondo 2015 J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 48 010201
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Categories: Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
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