About Journal of Optics
Scope
Journal of Optics™ publishes new experimental and theoretical research across all areas of pure and applied optics, both modern and classical. Research areas are categorised as:
- Nanophotonics and plasmonics
- Metamaterials and structured photonic materials
- Quantum photonics
- Biophotonics
- Light-matter interactions
- Nonlinear and ultrafast optics
- Propagation, diffraction and scattering
- Optical communication
- Integrated optics
- Photovoltaics and energy harvesting
We discourage incremental advances, purely numerical simulations without any validation, or research without a strong optics advance, e.g. computer algorithms applied to optical and imaging processes, equipment designs or material fabrication.
Why should you publish in Journal of Optics?
- High standards: Articles are rigorously peer reviewed by IOP Publishing’s global network of expert reviewers, supported by our top-level editorial board.
- Fast publication: We are committed to providing you with a fast, professional service to ensure rapid first decision, acceptance and publication times. Once accepted, your article will be accessible to readers within 24 hours and will include a citable DOI.
- Open Access: Journal of Optics offers authors the option to publish fully Open Access.
- Transfer opportunities: As well as accepting direct submissions, the journal also offers you a quick and easy solution to transfer your manuscript from another IOP Publishing journal if it does not fit that journal’s scope or significance criteria. Articles are transferred along with peer review reports to save time and avoid duplication of work for reviewers.
- Society owned: IOP Publishing is a leading society publisher of advanced physics research. Any profits generated by IOP Publishing are invested in the Institute of Physics, helping to support research, education and outreach around the world.
Article types
Journal of Optics welcomes submissions of the following article types:
- Research Papers: Articles of unrestricted length that report new research of outstanding quality and that make a significant advance in terms of the fundamental science or application of optics.
- Letters: Outstanding concise articles (strict length limit ≤ 3500 words), reporting important, new and timely developments. These articles should be deserving of priority review. Authors will also need to provide a letter of justification outlining reasons why the work is urgent and requires rapid publication.
- Topical Reviews: Written by leading researchers in their fields, these articles present the background to and overview of a particular field, and the current state of the art. Topical review articles are normally invited by the editors.
- PhD Tutorials: Background knowledge for an audience unfamiliar with the subject. Aimed at young researchers or more experienced researchers moving into a new field, tutorials give an introduction to the topic and are more didactic than a review article.
Special requirements
Journal of Optics’ statement regarding the inclusion of potentially offensive or inappropriate imagery in submitted papers:
We ask authors to carefully consider both the subject matter and provenance of images included in their work before submitting to the journal. If the submitted images could be potentially offensive to the journal’s readership or violate copyright, Journal of Optics reserves the right to request that authors seek alternative images or other means to express the same results before the final version is published.
Peer review
Our Publishing Support website provides more information on our reviewing process.
If an article is not accepted for publication in Journal of Optics, 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.
Inclusivity and diversity
IOP Publishing recognises that there are inequalities within the scientific publishing and research ecosystems. We are committed to a progressive approach to inclusivity and diversity, and are working hard to eliminate discrimination to foster an equitable and welcoming publishing environment for all.
More information about our work on inclusivity is available on our Open Physics hub.
Ethics
Research data
Please note that this policy requires authors to include a data availability statement in their article.
For any questions about the policy please contact the journal.
Many research funders now require authors to make all data related to their research available in an online repository. Please refer to the policy for further information about research data, data repositories and data citation.
Open access
Alternatively authors who do not select the gold open access option can choose a green open access route to publication.
For more information on IOP Publishing’s open access policies please see our Open access page. For our author rights policies please see our Author rights page.
Publication charges
Publication on a subscription-access basis is free of charge.
Authors have the option to pay the following article publication charge (APC) to publish their article on an open access basis under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence.
| GBP | EUR | USD | |
| Article publication charge* | £2230 | €2560 | $3075 |
| Reduced article publication charge* for Group B countries** | £500 | €575 | $675 |
| Reduced article publication charge for Group A countries** | £0 | €0 | $0 |
*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 Journal of Optics.
Transformative Agreements
Journal of Optics 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.
Colour printing
Abstracting and indexing services
We work with our authors to help make their work as easy to discover as possible. Journal of Optics is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:
- Chemical Abstracts Service
- CNKI Scholar
- ESBCO Academic Search Alumni Edition
- ESBCO Academic Search Complete
- ESBCO Academic Search Elite
- ESBCO Academic Search Premier
- ESBCO Academic Search Ultimate
- ESBCO TOC Premier
- Ei Compendex
- INIS (International Nuclear Information System)
- Inspec
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
- PASCAL
- Scopus
- VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnvi Zhurnal)
- Web of Science (Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, Current Contents – Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences, Current Contents – Engineering, Computing and Technology)