About New Journal of Physics

Co-owned by the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, New Journal of Physics (NJP) is an open-access journal publishing original research and topical reviews across the whole of physics. The journal’s Editorial Board and staff are committed to building NJP into the leading scientific journal in its field by publishing articles of outstanding scientific quality that merit the attention and interest of the whole physics community. NJP is available free to readers around the world and is funded by article publication charges.

Subject coverage

NJP’s coverage extends across the whole of physics, encompassing pure, applied, theoretical and experimental research, as well as interdisciplinary topics. Research areas covered by the journal include:

• Quantum physics (including quantum information)
• Atomic and molecular physics
• Optics
• Condensed matter
• Surface science
• Nanoscale science
• Photonics and device physics
• Soft matter and polymers
• Chemical physics
• Statistical mechanics, thermodynamics and nonlinear systems
• Fluid dynamics
• Plasmas
• Nuclear physics
• High energy particle physics
• Cosmology and astrophysics
• Biological and medical physics
• Earth science and geophysics

By publishing with one of the fastest growing journals in physics you can take advantage of a number of benefits including:

• Rigorous peer-review: maintaining high editorial standards is NJP’s number one priority. Every submission is preliminarily assessed by the Editorial Board who also guide the formal peer-review process. For more information and guideline to authors, please see our Publishing Support page.
• High standards: fast, rigorous and constructive peer review process, overseen by a member of the Editorial Board.
• Every NJP paper is downloaded hundreds of times within weeks of publication: open access guarantees you outstandingly high article visibility. More than 100,000 articles are read each month.
• Author-friendly copyright: NJP’s copyright statement allows you and your institution to reproduce, distribute and communicate the published version of your article to the public.
• Free colour and multimedia: you can take advantage of NJP’s online medium by including features that may not be possible in a print journal. This can include colour, movies, simulations and other supplementary features at no extra cost. You can also have a video abstract.
• Long-term archiving: NJP is committed to ensuring long-term access to its entire content and is preserved via the LOCKSS system, a key archiving initiative that enables member libraries to collect, store and provide access to their own local copy of the journal. Digital archives of NJP are also stored locally at The British Library and Die Deutsch Bibliothek.
• Accepted manuscripts: research can be downloaded and cited within 24 hours of acceptance.

NJP welcomes submissions of the following article types:

• Paper: reports of high-quality original research with conclusions representing a significant advance in the field.
• 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 typically invited by the Editorial Board.
• Fast track communications: outstanding concise articles, reporting important, new and timely developments. These articles should be deserving of priority review, and you are required to upload a justification statement along with your submission.
• Special issue article: invited articles, which will form a special collection of papers on a specific theme. When asked to select ‘Article Type’ on the submission system, please select ‘Special Issue Article’. Then select the special issue you’re submitting to in the drop-down box that appears.
• Roadmaps: extended collaborative articles offering a broad, multi-perspective overview of the latest developments and prospects in a topical research area.
• Perspectives: perspective articles are commissioned commentaries authored by leading researchers, aimed at highlighting the most timely and significant developments across the whole of physics.
• Comment: comment or criticism on work previously published in the journal. These are usually published with an associated Reply.

Article style

NJP publishes original research and topical reviews. As a journal serving the whole physics community, article abstracts, introductions and conclusions should be accessible to the non-specialist, stressing any wider implications of the work within physics. However, the main body should not compromise on the scientific rigour and detail demanded by an international physics research journal. The broad readership that NJP attracts gives authors an opportunity to convey to a wider audience, as well as to specialists, the importance of the work.

Authors are encouraged to take full advantage of the electronic medium to include colour, video, audio or other innovative presentation formats and links to more extensive tutorial information or data. However, use of such presentation techniques is not a criterion for article acceptance, and should only serve to effectively communicate the physics.

Article length

As NJP is an electronic-only journal, NJP articles have no rigid length restrictions. They should contain sufficient technical detail for an expert reader to understand and assess the methods and results. However, the NJP Editors do encourage authors to be concise, and short, high-quality articles are welcome. Articles should not normally be longer than 18,000 words (an A4 size journal page contains an average of 900 words).

Article title and abstract

To be suitable for NJP all articles must be accessible to and of interest to NJP’s broad readership. Article titles and abstracts should be written with this in mind. Specifically, both should be kept as short and non-technical as practicable, and the abstract should make clear the wider significance and interest of the work.

Citing an article in NJP

NJP uses an article numbering system which allows articles to be published one at a time, while maintaining separate sections for editorial material and focus issue articles. Articles should be referenced by using the six-digit article number in place of a page number, for instance:

Reece M 2013 New J. Phys. 15 043003

The pages in the PDF file of each article are numbered from 1. These page numbers should not normally be included in a reference. However, if it is desirable to indicate the length of an article, this can be done by including the number of pages, in parentheses, after the article number, for example:

Reece M 2013 New J. Phys. 15 043003 (21pp)

Each article in a volume has a unique six-digit number, the first two digits indicate the month in which the article has been published, the next two the type of article and the final two are a counter indicating the sequence number for the article within its month and category.

Video abstracts

New Journal of Physics was the first journal to include video abstracts, back in 2011. All authors are invited to submit a video abstract to be published alongside their article manuscript.

Video abstracts are aimed at increasing your visibility and that of your work. Through this medium, you can go beyond the constraints of the written article to personally explain the importance and value of your work to the journal’s audience.

Video abstracts should enhance a reader’s understanding and appreciation of an article through accessible and engaging presentation of the main results and conclusions reported.

Please see the general IOP Publishing guidelines page for technical guidance on creating a video abstract.

Please see more information, a ‘how to’ here and some examples here and in the articles below.

Fast-forward scaling theory for phase imprinting on a BEC: creation of a wave packet with uniform momentum density and loading to Bloch states without disturbance

Chaotic signatures of photoconductive Cu2ZnSnS4 nanostructures explored by Lorenz attractors

Latent heat of traffic moving from rest

Interactive figures

Including interactive figures in your article can enhance the communication of your research, add clarity, and give the reader the ability to manipulate the information contained in an image.

For guidelines on how to create and submit interactive figures please see our guide on Publishing Support.

General scientific summaries

Authors are encouraged to submit a general scientific summary to accompany their work. The purpose of this additional feature is to increase the accessibility of articles in NJP to a broad, non-specialist readership, and to raise the overall visibility and understanding of the journal’s content.

The following summary describes the peer review process for NJP, using the ANSI/NISO Standard Terminology for Peer Review:

• Identity transparency: single-anonymous, double-anonymous (author choice)
• Reviewer interacts with: Editor
• Review information published: review reports (author and reviewer opt in), author/editor communication, reviewer identities (reviewer opt in)

Our Publishing Support website provides more information on our reviewing process as well as checklists in both English and Chinese language to help authors prepare their manuscripts for submission.

An NJP article must meet the highest scientific quality standards, both in terms of originality and significance, and the research results should make substantial advances within a particular subfield of physics. The impact of an NJP article should be such that it will appeal to the journal’s broad readership. Towards ensuring high editorial standards, every article submission is preliminarily assessed by the Editorial Board before sending to independent reviewers.

If an article is not accepted for publication, we may offer the author the opportunity to transfer their submission to other suitable journals we publish.

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.

NJP maintains the highest standards of publication and research ethics and is a member of the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors are expected to comply with IOP Publishing’s Ethical policy.

Manuscripts reporting studies of humans or animals should pay due attention to the ethical aspects of the study. Such studies must conform with local statutory requirements. NJP fully endorses the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. Where appropriate a statement should be made that the study has been carried out with ethical committee approval. Studies involving experimental animals must attend to the welfare of the animals; the guidelines of the United Kingdom Coordinating Committee on Cancer Research (UKCCCR) provide a basis for welfare considerations. Authors should also be aware of Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals by the Institute of Laboratory Animal Resources. Please state if the work has been subject to animal ethics committee approval.

New Journal of Physics 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 New Journal of Physics.

Transformative Agreements

New Journal of Physics 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 to find out whether you qualify.

Discounts specific to NJP are available as follows:

• Members of the Institute of Physics and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft receive a 25% discount (applicable only once per article).
• NJP Associate Members receive a 5% discount (applicable only once per article).
• NJP reviewers can qualify for a 10% discount for each article that they have reviewed for the journal in the past 12 months. To qualify for the discount, submission of your article must be made after your report has been received (and within 12 months of sending the report). The discount cannot be applied retrospectively to submissions that are already in the publication process.

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

• Baidu Scholar
• Chemical Abstracts Service
• CNKI
• DOAJ
• EBSCO Academic Search Alumni Edition
• EBSCO Academic Search Complete
• EBSCO Academic Search Elite
• EBSCO Academic Search Premier
• EBSCO Academic Search Ultimate
• EBSCO Engineering Source
• EBSCO STM Source
• Ei Compendex
• INIS (International Nuclear Information System)
• Inspec
• INSPIRE – HEP
• J-Gate
• JST
• MathSciNet
• MyScienceWork
• NASA Astrophysics Data System
• Naver Academic
• Polymer Library
• ProQuest Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Collection
• ProQuest Advanced Technologies & Aerospace Index
• ProQuest Aerospace Database
• ProQuest Central
• ProQuest SciTech Premium Collection
• ProQuest Technology Collection
• R Discovery
• Scilit
• Scopus
• Semantic Scholar
• VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnyi Zhurnal)
• Wanfang Data
• Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded, Current Contents Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences, Essential Science Indicators)
• WTI AG
• x-mol
• Zentralblatt MATH