Informationsplattform Open Access: Physics

Physics

In this section we have compiled some information on Open Access (OA) in the field of physics. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do not hesitate to send us an E-mail.

 

General information on Open Access in the field of physics

The physics community has a long tradition of Open Access in its various forms. Indeed, in some areas OA is an inherent part of physics publication culture.

A culture of making physics preprints openly accessible started to develop in the 1960s, beginning with high energy physics (HEP). Because of the rapid pace at which this highly interactive and international subfield was developing, the time lag between manuscript submission and article publication was no longer deemed acceptable.

Since the early 1990s, electronic self-archiving of physics preprints has made such rapid progress that by now about 90% of the HEP research literature from the last ten years is freely accessible through repositories such as arXiv.org, the CERN Document Server and SPIRES HEP. The preprints are either drafts of journal articles or provisional research results and discussion papers which have not (yet) been published elsewhere. The thematic range has diversified greatly over time. For example, arXiv.org now comprises 125 sections on sub-fields of physics and on other disciplines. However, despite the spread of preprint archiving, journal publications which bear the hallmark peer reviewed are still what counts when it comes to scientific reputation, career advancement and the allocation of research funds.

 

The journals owned by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) play an important role in the physics community's OA publishing activities, which serve as a complement to arXiv. The SISSA periodical the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP), which was launched in 1997, was the first major OA physics journal. In 2003, SISSA launched a second OA periodical, the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP). Because the OA business model did not prove viable, the Institute of Physics (IOP) took over the publishing of these (and subsequently other) journals in 2004 and converted them to moderately-priced toll-access periodicals. Under an institutional-membership-fee scheme introduced in 2007, the articles of authors whose institutes are members of JHEP (18% of total articles) and of the Journal of Instrumentation (2006-) are made openly accessible. JCAP was included in this OA scheme in January 2008. As from January 2010, Springer will publish JHEP on SISSA's behalf as a purely online journal and the two parties will "investigate the conversion of JHEP into an economically sustainable open access publication". SISSA will retain control over scientific and editorial matters. Subject to certain conditions of use, all IOP journal articles are available free of charge for 30 days from the date of online publication.

 

In addition to the aforementioned journals, there are several periodicals which are completely OA (two of them have an Impact Factor greater than 3.00) and which are funded via publication fees and, in some cases, institutional membership fees. They include the New Journal of Physics (1998-) which is co-owned by the IOP and the German Physical Society (DPG) and which covers a wide range of themes, the Optics Express (1997-), and the journal PMC Physics A which was launched in October 2007 by PhysMath Central, a division of the OA publishers BioMed Central. PMC Physics B followed in February 2008 and PMC Biophysics was launched in May 2008. Both the Impact Factor of the New Journal of Physics and the number of articles it publishes have increased by over 40% since 2004. This success is due not only to the journal's consistently high quality standards but also to the promotion of OA in general, and the New Journal of Physics in particular, by research funders and other institutions such as the Max Planck Society, the Joint Information Committee and Cornell University.

 

There are also a number of OA physics journals with more modest Impact Factors and periodicals which are not (yet) covered by the Science Citation Index and whose business models are not based on publication fees. The articles of the European Journal of Physics are made freely available for 30 days after the date of publication. The Electronic Journals Library (EZB) currently classifies 459 of the physics journals in its catalogue as being OA. The Directory of Open Access Journals, whose scientific selection criteria are stricter than those of the EZB, contains 61 peer-reviewed OA physics journals (as of June 2008).

 

With the planned conversion of the major scholarly journals of an entire subdiscipline to OA, the field of physics has taken on the role of pacemaker once again. SCOAP3 (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), an ongoing project initiated by CERN, aims to convert leading HEP journals published by the American Physical Society (APS), the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the publishing consortium Springer/EDP Sciences/Societa Italiana di Fisica to OA. The converted journals will not charge publication fees but will be financed by SCOAP3 partners. One reason for opting for a sponsorship model rather than publication fees is that some 80% of HEP articles are produced by small groups of theoretical high energy physicists with limited financial resources. A publishing model based on sponsorship is an optimal way to ensure and promote scholarly competence and participation in moving the publishing system in the direction of OA.

References

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Open Access journals (selection)

The numbers of published articles given below are for the publication year 2007 (source: Science Citation Index). The Journal Impact Factors are taken from the online edition of the Journal Citation Reports (Copyright 2008).

  • Optics express
    Optical Society of America, 1997-
    Funding: via publication fees
    Impact Factor: 3.278; number of articles: 2.548
  • New Journal of Physics
    Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), German Physical Society (DPG), 1998-
    Thematic range: all areas of physics
    Funding: via publication fees
    Impact Factor: 3.312; number of articles: 806
  • PMC Physics A
    BioMed Central's PhysMath Central division, October 2007-
    Funding: (PMC A, B and PMC Biophysics): via article processing charges (APCs) and institutional membership in BioMed Central.
  • PMC Physics B
    BioMed Central's PhysMath Central division, February 2008-
  • Funding: (PMC A, B and PMC Biophysics): via article processing charges (APCs) and institutional membership in BioMed Central.
  • PMC Physics C (PMC Biophysics)
    BioMed Central's PhysMath Central division, May 2008-
    Funding: (PMC A, B and PMC Biophysics): via article processing charges (APCs) and institutional membership in BioMed Central.
  • Chinese Physics
    Impact Factor: 1.343
  • Chinese Physics Letters
    Impact factor: 0.972; number of articles: 1.018
  • Journal of High Energy Physics
    International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA); Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) 1997-
    1997-2003: Open Access
    2004-2006: subscription-based
    2007-2008: hybrid journal on membership basis (Open Access articles: 18%) with automated peer-review system
    (Subject to certain conditions of use, articles are available free of charge for 30 days from the date of online publication.)
    Impact Factor: 6.019; number of articles: 1.279
  • Acta physica Polonica. A (online 2002-)
    Acta physica Polonica. B (online 1999-)
    Polish Physical Society; Institute of Physics (IoP)
    ("Free direct access for limited period of time" (Source: EZB) )
    A: Impact Factor: 0.433; number of articles: 631
    B: Impact Factor: 0.648
  • Brazilian Journal of Physics
    Impact Factor: 0.575
  • Electronic Journal of Mathematical and Physical Sciences
    EJMAPS Organization, 2002-
  • Entropy
    Molecular Diversity Preservation International, 1999-
  • Europhysics news
    Springer; (since 2000) EDP Sciences, 1997-
  • European journal of physics
    (Articles freely available for 30 days from date of online publication.)
    Impact Factor: 0.741; number of articles: 146
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Subject-based repositories and databases

  • arXiv.org
    This archive hosts almost 500,000 OA preprints (as of September 2008) in 39 physics sections and 86 sections in the areas of nonlinear sciences, mathematics, statistics, computer science and quantitative biology. The repository was founded in Los Alamos in 1991 by Paul Ginsparg who also wrote the software for it. In 2001 the primary archive moved to Cornell University. ArXiv.org has mirror sites [http://arxiv.org/servers.html] in 16 countries.
  • SPIRES HEP Literature Database
    A collaborative project involving     SLAC, DESY and Fermilab, SPIRES HEP is an extensive database which covers preprints and published articles related to high energy physics. Records include the addresses at which the papers can be found and information on cited and citing papers. The cross-linking of citations and full texts at an early stage enables scholars to keep up to date with the latest scientific developements. At the end of May 2008, the project partners and CERN announced plans to build a new repository called INSPIRE as a successor to SPIRES.
  • CERN Document Server 
    Contains mainly CERN publications and preprints.
  • HAL - Hyper Article en Ligne
    HAL is the nationwide institutional document server of the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS). It is sponsored by five major French research organisations and contains a high percentage of physics publications. Researchers who receive CNRS funding are expected to deposit their publications in HAL.
  • PhysNet 
    By harvesting metadata using OAI-PMH, PhysNet provides links to almost 1.5 million documents distributed in institutional physics servers around the world. These documents include research reports, yearbooks, preprints, lists of publications, theses and dissertations, teaching materials and computer programmes. Twenty mirror sites can be accessed via PhysNet.
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Member of the open-access.net Scientific Advisory Board from the field of physics

 

Prof. Dr. Eberhard Bodenschatz - University of Goettingen, Max Planck Institute (MPI) Goettingen, German Physical Society (DPG), Editor-in-Chief New Journal of Physics

 

Other board members

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