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.
Inclusive publishing and trusted science
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.
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.
- Technical Notes: brief, methods-based articles of a more technical nature, which make a useful and novel addition to the literature.
- Special Issue and Topical Issue Articles: selected presentations from international conferences or articles addressing a cutting-edge topic in a key area of physics.
- 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 Editorial Board.
- Comments: comment or criticism on work previously published in the journal. These are where possible published with an associated reply. Comments should be timely and should have a direct bearing on the significance of the results in the paper being commented on. For example, they may:
- point out and/or correct a significant error or misinterpretation in the results.
- significantly extend or generalise a result of the paper in some way.
- point out relevant prior literature that significantly affects the novelty or priority of the results.
Peer review
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
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.
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.
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.
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* | £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