O
ver the last decade, rising submissions to APS researchpublications have driven or strongly affected nearlyevery other effort in the APS Editorial Office. In this pastyear, 28,691 papers came into the Editorial Office forconsideration, an increase of 5.2% over 2003. TheEditor-in-Chief worries about this relentless increase, butstates that a decrease would worry him still more: worryis the constant. A cadre of excellent young editors, manywith international backgrounds, have joined the staff inthe last few years. It is gratifying that APS is abletoattract individuals of this caliber, and their commitment,contributions and enthusiasm have enlivened the office.So far, the highly skilled and productive JournalOperations staff members, who assist the editors withtheir work, have been able to handle the additionalpapers without additional staff.Two additional editors are likely to be needed thisyear due to continued growth in manuscriptsubmissions, and space is once again an issue. Expansionof the editorial office is problematic, given its location inthe environmentally sensitive Pine Barrens area of LongIsland. Other options are being explored, such asprocuring additional local office space, increasingtelecommuting, and researching the possibility of anoverseas editorial office
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in recognition of the fact thattwo-thirds of authors are outside the US. These optionsare viable thanks to Prism, the up-and-running fullyelectronic editorial system that is the outcome of nearly adecade of analysis, planning, and hard work, and whichreplaces the bulky and vulnerable paper-based system.Migration of the entire office from the old Unix-basedsystem to a new Macintosh environment was part of theproject as well, and was accomplished in 2004 by thevigorous Journal Information Systems staff, withdedicated support from the Facilities Services staff duringdeployment. Another constant concern at the Editorial Office isround-the-clock continuity of service to the worldwidephysics community. On the several occasions of electricalpower failure in 2004, the propane-powered generatorwas called into duty and served with distinction. Everydesktop computer is equipped with an uninterruptiblepower supply to avoid any loss of data in the instantbefore the generator kicks in. A surprising breach inInternet service led to planning for an additional andmore reliable source and provider.New composition and production vendors have beenengaged for both
Physical Review D
and
Physical Review C.
Competitive pricing is one motivation for the switch, andbusiness continuity is another. In the event of a problemwith one of the three vendors, another could likely takeup the slack. Well-controlled expenses and savings as aresult of the new vendors allowed APS to lowerinstitutional subscription prices for journals for 2005.The issues of ethics and misconduct in physicspublishing are not likely to go away anytime soon.Several new cases arose this year, including one thatinvolved plagiarism in another journal of a
PhysicalReview
paper that was 40 years old. A broad but succinctset of guidelines on ethical conduct in scientificpublishing has been created, coming out of an IUPAP-sponsored workshop held in October, 2003. Detailsabout the workshop and the guidelines are available athttp://www.iupap.org/working/workshop.shtml.Scholarly publishers, authors, readers, andgovernment agencies continued the dialogue on “openaccess” in the past year, with the APS Editor-in-Chief andPublisher listening carefully and when appropriate,participating in the discussion. The term “open access”isslightly better defined, and there is improvedunderstanding of the diversity of the fields involved, andtheir varying suitability for the open-access model. Publicinterest in biomedical research, the field’s presentgenerous federal funding, and the level of presentationofits papers, make the biomedical field perhaps moresuited to open access than physics is. Recovery of realcosts is the bottom line, and a publisher like APS, withacommitment to updating and maintaining an archiveindefinitely, cannot enter into an unproven fundingmodel.
RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
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