Archives: Questions

As an Editorial Board Member, you play a vital role in safeguarding the quality, integrity and relevance of our journals. Your expertise directly shapes the research communities we serve, and we are committed to recognising that contribution.
At IOP Publishing, we do this through a range of benefits, professional recognition and opportunities designed to support your career and strengthen your impact within the research ecosystem. 

What you receive as an Editorial Board Member of an IOPP-owned journal:

Journal-related benefits

• Complimentary journal access:
  If you serve on the board of a hybrid journal, you will receive free access to the journal for the duration of your term.
• Article processing charge support:
  If you work on a gold open access journal, you will receive two APC waivers per year.

Recognition and professional visibility

• Formal accreditation:
  From 2026, you will receive a digital certificate of membership and an accreditation badge, providing visible and shareable recognition of your editorial contribution.
• Editorial Excellence Awards:
  Also launching in 2026, these awards will recognise outstanding editorial contributions across subject areas. Award recipients will receive formal certification and increased visibility through IOP Publishing channels.
• Public acknowledgement:
  Your name will appear on the journal’s Editorial Board webpage, enhancing your professional profile and discoverability.

Networking and career development

• Professional connections:
  You may be invited to Editorial Board dinners and networking events, offering opportunities to build relationships across disciplines and career stages.
• Career progression:
  If you are earlier in your research career, board membership provides leadership experience, editorial insight and access to expanded professional networks.

Contributing with purpose

As a society-owned publisher, IOP Publishing reinvests 100 percent of its profits into public and scientific good. Editorial Board Members support science directly through this work, contributing to a publishing model where research quality is prioritised over profit.

IOP Publishing (IOP) has a transformative agreement with Croatian Academic and Research Libraries Consortium (CALC) in Croatia to enable a transition to open access publishing.

Who can benefit?
All corresponding authors that are current staff members, researchers (permanent, temporary and visiting), or students at one of the institutions below at the point of submission, can publish open access at no cost to themselves. The corresponding author is the person listed as Corresponding Author at the time of submission, and is the person responsible for communicating with the journal during the peer review and publication process.

What’s included?

• Articles accepted will be eligible for transformative agreement funding to enable authors to publish open access with no cost to themselves
• Research paper, Focus Collection, letter and review article types
• Included journals are this in lists A, B, C and D. Click here for a full title list of eligible journals.

Please note
You may find our author guide for submitting under a transformative agreement helpful located in our Transformative Agreement hub.
For more information, please contact your relevant library contact at your university.

Eligible Institutions
Institute of Physics, Zagreb
Ruđer Bošković Institute
University of Osijek
University of Rijeka
University of Slavonski Brod
University of Split
University of Zagreb

Is your institution not listed here? Recommend open access funding to your library.

Reviewers should report any suspicions of misconduct to the journal staff for investigation. This includes, but is not limited to, suspicions of:

• Plagiarism
• Duplicate publication
• Parallel submission
• Data fabrication / falsification
• Image manipulation
• Incorrect authorship
• Author conflict of interest
• Unethical research practices
• Content that could be considered offensive

We follow the COPE guidelines on responding to whistleblowers, which includes protecting your anonymity.

Considering the evolving capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), including large language models (LLMs) and AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, this policy outlines acceptable and unacceptable uses of these tools by reviewers.

Why this policy matters

Generative AI tools can offer real benefits when used responsibly, such as improving clarity, readability and accessibility of peer review reports. They can help reviewers communicate feedback more effectively and overcome language barriers.

However, these tools are not infallible. They can produce misleading or fabricated content, lack accountability, and cannot guarantee confidentiality. Uploading manuscript material to GenAI platforms may expose sensitive data to third parties, breaching author rights and privacy laws. Misuse of AI in peer review risks damaging trust in the process and undermining research integrity.

This policy aims to balance these considerations, safeguarding confidentiality, accuracy, and fairness while allowing transparent use of AI for language improvement.

Acceptable use

Reviewers may use GenAI tools only to assist with improving the written quality of their peer review reports. This includes:

• Checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting
• Enhancing clarity, flow, and structure of the language
• Translating a completed review from the reviewer’s first language into English

Reviewers should disclose any use of GenAI tools for language editing and translation. Reviewers (including co-reviewers) remain fully responsible for the contents of their reviews and for ensuring their accuracy, integrity, and originality.

Unacceptable use

Reviewers must not:

• Upload any part of a manuscript under review, including text, figures, tables, supplementary files, or associated communications, to GenAI tools
• Use Gen AI tools to analyse, summarise, interpret, or evaluate the manuscript or its scientific content
• Use GenAI tools to generate references or citations
• Use GenAI tools to write any portion of the review report beyond language refinement

If a reviewer misuses GenAI tools, we may disregard some or all of their review.

Reviewer responsibility

By accepting a review invitation, reviewers agree to:

• Adhere to IOP Publishing’s ethical standards, including confidentiality, conflict of interest disclosure, and maintaining anonymity
• Ensure that the manuscript under review is not shared with any third party, including GenAI tools
• Take full responsibility for the content of their review, whether conducted individually or as part of a co-review

GenAI tools are not expert peers. They lack higher-level reasoning and critical thinking, are prone to generating false or misleading content (“hallucinations”), and cannot take responsibility for the material they produce. They also lack the legal personality to sign publishing agreements or licenses and cannot be held accountable for ethical compliance.

Reviewers are expected to point out relevant work that has not been cited, and use citations to explain where elements of the work have been previously reported. When writing a report, reviewers should justify any literature references suggested for inclusion in the work.

Citations should add value, and should not be unfairly biased towards an individual, group or organisation. Please note that the Editor reserves the right to challenge excessive citation suggestions, especially to the reviewer’s own work. The practice of including superfluous references, including to the reviewer’s own work, to promote and inflate citation scores is unethical. The Editor reserves the right to exclude citation suggestions from reports if these are considered to be potential acts of citation manipulation, and/or to protect reviewers’ anonymity.

Reviewers should inform the journal if they are unable to review a paper or can only do so with some delay. Reviewers should not delay the peer review process unnecessarily, either deliberately or inadvertently.

Reviewers should judge objectively the quality of the research reported, give fair, frank and constructive criticism and refrain from personal criticism of the authors. Reviewers’ judgements should be explained and supported so that authors can understand the basis of the comments and judgements.

Reviewer names are kept strictly confidential. Reviewer identities may only be disclosed to journal Editorial Board members, who are also instructed to maintain confidentiality. You should not disclose your identity to the authors, including sending reports directly to the authors.

Information and ideas obtained whilst acting as a reviewer must be kept confidential and not used for competitive advantage.

We also ask that you do not discuss the papers you have reviewed with colleagues unless they have been published.

To uphold impartiality, you should consider any potential conflict of interest before agreeing to review and should contact the editorial office in the following instances:

• You are in direct competition with the authors
• You are a co-worker or collaborator with one of the authors
• You are in a position to exploit the authors’ work (commercially or otherwise)
• You may be legally prohibited due to national sanctions
• You are in a position which prevents you from giving an objective opinion of the work.

Minor conflicts do not disqualify you from reporting on an article, but will be taken into account when considering the reviewers’ recommendations. Major conflicts of interest (especially relating to a financial commercial interest >£5000/year) do disqualify you. You should act within the spirit of the Nolan principles of public life.

If you are unable to act as a reviewer due to a conflict of interest, we will select an alternative reviewer.

If the journal is double-anonymous you may not be sure if you have a conflict of interest. If you suspect there may be a reason you should not act as a reviewer, please contact the editorial office who will be able to investigate and advise.

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Yusuf Kasim is a PhD student at University of Ljubljana. His article “Dual unitary circuits in random geometries” was published under the transformative agreement with the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.

“Having a migratory background from a developing country (Iraq) and being in personal contact with scientist in both natural and social science in my home county makes me very aware of the difficulties scientists face in these countries accessing reputable research. Thus, I always held the belief that science should be open and free to access to everyone.

It was then very important for me that my research is accessible to everyone, so the choice to publish open access was an easy one to make. The experience to publish in J.Phys.A was a smooth one, it was my first published article, and was generally well received by the community.

I believe that initiatives to promote open access are important to the community, and I would encourage my colleague to choose OA for their publications.”