About IOP SciNotes

IOP SciNotes™ is a peer-reviewed, open access journal that enables researchers to publish individual stages or units of their research work, allowing anyone to validate, share and discover a wider range of scientific research.

The subject scope includes the following broad areas:

• Physics
• Materials
• Bioscience and Medical Physics
• Environment and Energy
• Chemistry
• Engineering
• Mathematics and Computation

The journal’s scope excludes astronomy, and researchers working in astronomical science are directed to Research Notes of the AAS (published in partnership with the American Astronomical Society) as a publication venue for appropriate brief scientific communications.

• Gain recognition and credit for more of your research outputs;
• Enable more of your research outputs to be open and visible to the entire research community;
• Communicate your research developments and results more rapidly;
• Encourage more open, transparent and reproducible approaches to scientific endeavour;
• Inform peers and students about useful new methods and protocols;
• Reinforce the value of high-quality peer review of research outputs;
• Support a society publisher that puts any profits back into science through the Institute of Physics.

IOP SciNotes supports open, transparent and reproducible approaches to scientific discovery and has been designed as a formal publication forum for valuable scientific material that may not be in a format ready or appropriate for publication as a traditional full-length article. In doing so the journal provides authors with publication credit and an outlet for all the research work that deserves long-term archival preservation and access for future reference.

Articles in IOP SciNotes can be up to a maximum of 2,500 words (including abstract, figures and references) but must contain sufficient information to be replicated by other scientific readers without excessive external references. The journal specifically welcomes submissions of the following study types:

• Preliminary results
• Pilot studies
• Negative or reproduced results and/or observations
• Descriptions of a new method* or protocol*
• Descriptions of new data* or code* that enable others to use and understand them (with citation to the full dataset located in an open repository)
• Registered methodological reports (describing a new method prior to conducting the research and collecting data)

All primary data underpinning new results or descriptions of datasets should be cited in the article’s reference list and be accessible to other researchers unless the authors are prohibited to make the data public for legal or ethical reasons.

*If submitting a method, data, code, or protocol descriptor, the article must contain the following:

• Title
• Abstract (max 300 words)
• Description of the type of data/method/code/protocol
• Description of the format of the data/method/code/protocol
• Description of how the data/method/code/protocol was generated or developed
• Description of where the data/method/code/protocol is stored and how it can be accessed
• Description of the scientific value of the data/method/code/protocol and how it could be used by other researchers
• References, including citation information for any related journal article

IOP SciNotes operates a double-anonymous peer review process, in which authors remain anonymous to the reviewers throughout the review process. Authors are responsible for anonymizing their manuscript before submitting their paper. A checklist (Chinese language version) is available to help authors with this process.

Our Publishing Support website provides more information on our reviewing process.

This journal offers authors and reviewers transparent peer review.

If an article is not accepted for publication in IOP SciNotes, we may offer the author the opportunity to transfer their submission to other suitable journals we publish. This process is explained in more detail on our Publishing Support website.

The journal does not make a subjective assessment on the potential future impact or significance of an article, instead it provides a platform for rapidly communicating research expected to have value for the scientific community. The peer-review process is specifically focused on assessing the following criteria:

• Scientific validity: the study is performed rigorously, adheres to appropriate study design and/or reporting guidelines, and any conclusions made are supported by the data;
• Self-explanatory: the study reported in the article can be replicated by other researchers;
• Clarity: the study is written in English using appropriate technical terminology.

IOP SciNotes has no subscription charges and the costs of publication are fully funded by article publication charges (APCs).

*excluding VAT where applicable

**eligibility criteria can be found here

APCs only apply to articles accepted for publication; there are no submission charges.

There are no other charges for publishing in IOP SciNotes.

Transformative Agreements

IOP SciNotes is included in our transformative agreements which allow authors from some institutions to publish open access without paying an APC.

Find out if you’re covered by an agreement

If you are covered by an agreement, use our author guide to help you submit your paper.

Countries where we have transformative agreements include:
Austria, Canada, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Germany, Poland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.

Paying for open access

Various discounts, waivers and funding arrangements are available to support our authors. Visit our Paying for open access page for further details.

We work with our authors to make their work as easy to discover as possible. IOP SciNotes is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:

• Baidu Scholar
• CNKI
• DOAJ
• Inspec
• J-Gate
• JST
• MyScienceWork
• NASA Astrophysics Data System
• Naver Academic
• R Discovery
• Scilit
• Scite
• Semantic Scholar
• Wanfang Data
• x-mol