About Physica Scripta

Scope

Physica Scripta™ is an international journal for new experimental, theoretical and applied research covering all areas of physics and related multidisciplinary topics across the physical sciences. Areas of particular interest include (but are not limited to):

 Atomic, molecular and optical physics (including photonics and lasers)
Quantum science and technology
Plasma science and technology
Condensed matter, surface science and thin films
Materials science (including nanotechnology)
Physical and quantum chemistry
Biophysics, soft matter and liquids
Mathematical and statistical physics
Gravitation and cosmology
Astrophysics and space science
High energy physics
Nuclear and particle physics
Nonlinear dynamics and complex systems
Computational science and modelling (including machine learning, big data and algorithms relevant to the physical sciences)
Measurement science and instrumentation
Medical physics
Educational physics

The journal aims to increase the visibility and accessibility of research to the wider physical sciences community.  The journal does not make a subjective assessment on the potential future significance of a paper, instead providing a rapid platform for communicating research that meets high standards of scientific rigour and contributes to the development of knowledge in physics.

Article types

Physica Scripta welcomes submissions of the following article types:

Research Papers: articles that report new research. To meet the criteria for publication, research papers must display originality and scientific rigour, and where possible describe the broader context or relevance of the work.
Invited Comments and Reviews: articles that describe the current thinking on outstanding problems, open questions, important new applications, new theoretical and experimental approaches, and/or predictions of future developments. These articles should be readily understood by non-specialist physical scientists. Unsolicited submissions of reviews are also welcomed.
Special Issue and Topical Issue Articles: selected presentations from international conferences or articles addressing a cutting-edge topic in a key area of physics.

Submit to a Special Issue

Peer review

Physica Scripta 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.

If an article is not accepted for publication in Physica Scripta, 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

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.

Research data

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.

Open access

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 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*	£1650	€1880	$2220
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.

Abstracting and indexing services

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

ISI (Science Citation Index®, SciSearch®, ISI Alerting Services, Current Contents®/Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences)
Scopus
Inspec
Chemical Abstracts Service
Compendex
GeoRef
INIS Atomindex (International Nuclear Information System)
MathSciNet
NASA Astrophysics Data System
VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnyi Zhurnal)
Zentralblatt MATH

Journal metrics

Physica Scripta metrics