About Physica Scripta

As a society-owned publisher with a legacy of serving scientific communities, we are committed to offering a home to all scientifically valid and rigorously reviewed research. In doing so, we aim to accelerate the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the advancement of scholarly communications to benefit all.

Physica Scripta supports this mission and actively demonstrates our core values of inclusive publishing and trusted science:

• Inclusive publishing: We welcome all papers on the basis of scientific validity and a strong methodology. Our scope is inclusive of many types of research including interdisciplinary, null and negative results, and replication studies.
• Trusted Science: Peer review is the backbone to trustworthy scientific scholarly communications. Our internal peer review process assesses all papers with strict scientific and ethical standards.

The following summary describes the peer review process for Physica Scripta, 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.

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.

IOP Publishing follows Guidelines on Inclusive Language and Images in Scholarly Communication to ensure that journal articles use bias-free and culturally sensitive communication. We ask authors to please follow these guidelines in their manuscript submissions.

More information about our work on inclusivity is available on our Open Physics hub.

Physica Scripta 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.

Physica Scripta has adopted IOP Publishing’s research data policy. Please check that your article complies with the policy before submission.

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.

Physica Scripta is a hybrid open access journal. Authors have the option to pay an article publication charge (APC) to publish their article on a gold open access basis under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. Articles published on a gold open access basis are freely available to everyone to read and reuse immediately upon publication, provided the terms of the licence are followed and clear attribution to the author is given.

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 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*	£1700	€1935	$2285
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 Physica Scripta.

Transformative Agreements

Physica Scripta 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.