EPL comes of age
Abstract
Twenty-one years have now passed since the launch of Europhysics Letters which merged the physics letters journals of two learned societies: Journal de Physique Lettres and Lettere al Nuovo Cimento belonging, respectively, to the French Physical Society (SFP) and to the Italian Physical Society (SIF). This new journal was also supported by the UK Institute of Physics (IOP) and many other National Physical Societies, members of the European Physical Society (EPS).
The aim of this merger was expressed by the words of G. H. Stafford, the President of EPS in 1985, for whom Europhysics Letters marked `an important milestone in the progress towards greater unity in Europe' which began with the creation of the European Physical Society nearly twenty years earlier. Europhysics Letters was supposed to be a strong European-based journal for the publication of short important communications covering all domains of physics under the supervision and the scientific control of EPS. In 2007, 21 years later, Europhysics Letters has now come of age and the Board of Directors, under the control of EPS, has decided to mature the journal, now re-branded as EPL and characterized by a new cover design and a new printed format, thus encouraging development into a top-tier journal, a leading global home for ground-breaking physics research letters. The objective is to make EPL a high-impact physics journal leading towards an increase in visibility, impact, prestige, scientific quality, reputation and impact factor although all scientists are currently aware that the presentation of impact factors must be taken with a grain of salt. A new publishing contract amongst the EPL partners will directly involve, besides EDPS (the publishing company of SFP) and SIF, the Institute of Physics through its publishing department (IOP Publishing) in a more active role, its task being hosting the on-line facilities of the journal. The combined publishing expertise and marketing knowledge of EDPS, IOP Publishing and SIF should ensure that EPL considerably increases the number of published papers over the next few years. In addition, EPL should also increase the number of published papers in a significant manner since IOP Publishing in 2007 will discontinue the letter sections in Journal of Physics and encourage their redirection to EPL. Thus EPL will become the only top-tier physics letters-specific journal edited and published exclusively within Europe. EPL has sometimes been considered as a European journal by the non-European scientific community. Although its publishers are indeed European, its content is truly international as presently already one-third of the papers published in 2006 come from non-European countries. We hope this proportion will still increase in the near future. EPL will still be guided by the initial target fixed by N. Kurti, the first Editor-in-Chief of Europhysics Letters: `Scientific publishing ... is one of those matters which is desirable to handle on an international level'. IOP Publishing will provide increased visibility and promotion of the journal through an extensive advertising and marketing campaign including presence at all major scientific events and additionally through a developing and constantly updated new website available at http://www.epljournal.org. The scientific breadth of EPL Editorial Board will increase during 2007 both thematically and geographically with a special effort towards attracting articles from high energy and particles physics, atomic, molecular and optical physics, astroparticles and cosmology research, quantum optics and information research and from life sciences. EPL will also strengthen its links with the condensed and soft matter topics and extend its range to cover physics communities in the USA and Asia. EPL is proud to be a journal produced by physicists for physicists. The Editorial Board, the essential core of active research scientists devoted to the evaluation of the papers, presently comprises 35 highbrow scientists, with a likely expansion in 2007, qualified by their recognized competences in their fields of expertise. The publication times (submission to on-line publication) of EPL are amongst the shortest for peer-reviewed letters journals. In 2006 the average time between submission and e-first publication has been 16 and 9.2 weeks for articles with and without revision, respectively, and the average time from acceptance to on-line first publication was kept lower that 4 weeks. The `Latest articles' service supplies world-wide visibility with the full on-line edition of the most recent issues of EPL posted for 30 days in open access. The evaluation process ensures a helpful and honest peer review connecting physicists from all over the world and providing the authors with constructive suggestions for improvement whenever they are necessary. Another added value that EPL offers to authors is the editorial agreement for mutual transfer which has been extended to the major partner journals, The European Physical Journal series and the Journal of Physics series. This provides an alternative opportunity for publishing scientifically sound manuscripts that may not be suitable for the journal of original submission. EPL is therefore destined to become the keystone of the European publishing platform for the whole world scientific community. Although the staff and Board members of EPL will make all possible efforts to provide the best services to readers and authors, it is only authors and readers that will increase the impact of the review, trusting the journal to publish their best works.- Publication:
-
EPL (Europhysics Letters)
- Pub Date:
- January 2007
- DOI:
- 10.1209/0295-5075/77/10000
- Bibcode:
- 2007EL.....7710000J