Mauro Paternostro, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Mauro Paternostro, is a quantum physicist at the University of Palermo and Queen’s University Belfast, and an expert in quantum information processing and quantum technology. Working on the foundations of the subject, his team is doing pioneering research in cavity optomechanics, quantum communication and beyond. He is also editor in chief of the IOP Publishing journal Quantum Science and Technology.

IOP Publishing has a transformative agreement with your institution for funded open access publishing, how has that helped you?
I think it has been a game-changing agreement as far as the publication of our output is concerned. With the stringent criteria that the research councils have put on outputs supported by grants – from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for instance – and the need for them to be fully accessible, and data to be fully available to the community, having a TA that guarantees open access is what we need. It’s great to have the peace of mind that IOP Publishing is a viable avenue for where my EPSRC-compliant outputs can be published. Apart from funding compliance, the IOP Publishing agreement removes the administrative burden of dealing with invoices for the article publication charges (APCs) which is a big relief for the scientists.