About Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Scope
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion™ covers all aspects of plasma physics research and discovery, and the technology that plasma research relies on. Research methods and realisation of results may include, but are not confined to, laboratory and in situ experimentation, analytical methods, computationally assisted experimental or theoretical methods, advanced numerical computation, and approaches that utilise machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Why should you publish in Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion?
- High standards: the editorial policy is to maintain the quality of published papers at the highest level by strict peer review.
- Fast publication: we are committed to providing you with a quick, professional service to ensure rapid first decision, acceptance and publication. Once accepted, your article will be accessible to readers within 24 hours and will include a citable DOI.
- Open access: Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion is a hybrid open access journal–this is a publishing model in which subscription-based journals give authors the choice to make individual articles available on an open access basis (on payment of an article publication charge).
- 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.
- International Editorial Board: scientific leadership for Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion is provided by the Editor-in-Chief, supported by Deputy Editors and an international Editorial Board, with a broad scientific and geographical distribution.
- 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
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion welcomes submissions of the following article types:
- Papers: reports of high-quality original research with conclusions representing a significant advance in the field.
- Letters: concise, outstanding articles reporting results that are of particularly high interest to the plasma community. They are designed to provide rapid publication and high visibility for your most significant and timely research results. You are required to upload a justification statement along with your submission. Letters are usually expected to be 4-6 journal pages.
- 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.
- Perspectives: commentaries on the impact of recently published work, or authoritative discussions on the future direction of a field, that are of notable interest to the community. Perspectives are normally invited by the Editorial Board.
- Roadmaps: these specially commissioned articles are authored collaboratively by leading researchers in a field, providing an overview on the status, current challenges, future challenges and emerging technologies of each author’s particular area of interest.
This journal also publishes Special Issues, which are special collections of articles invited from a specific conference or on a specific theme. A special issue can include any of the article types above. A selection of special issues can be found in the ‘focus issues’ drop-down box on the submission form.
Special requirements
Reuse of conference material
Extended abstracts, conference proceedings and other conference-related material – that has not otherwise been formally published in a journal – can be used without restriction by the original author(s) as part of a submission to PPCF, provided that the authors have not transferred or assigned copyright when sharing the material, or made the material available under any exclusive licence (as per the IOP Publishing preprint policy).
Peer review
The following summary describes the peer review process for Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 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.
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* | £2295 | €2635 | $3165 |
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 Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
Transformative Agreements
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 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. Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion is currently included in the following abstracting and discovery services:
- Chemical Abstracts Service
- CNKI Scholar
- EBSCO Academic Search Alumni Edition
- EBSCO Academic Search Complete
- EBSCO Academic Search Elite
- EBSCO Academic Search Premier
- EBSCO Academic Search Ultimate
- EBSCO Applied Science & Technology Source
- EBSCO Applied Science & Technology Source Ultimate
- EBSCO Applied Science and Technology Index
- EBSCO Book Review Digest Plus
- EBSCO Computers & Applied Sciences Complete
- EBSCO Engineering Source
- EBSCO STM Source
- EBSCO TOC Premier
- Ei Compendex
- INIS (International Nuclear Information System)
- Inspec
- NASA Astrophysics Data System
- Scopus
- VINITI Abstracts Journal (Referativnyi Zhurnal)
- Web of Science (Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded, Current Contents – Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences)