1. New Journal of Physics njp.org Professor Robert Brown
Editorial Director
Institute of Physics Publishing, UK
Notes for title slide

2. Background to New Journal of Physics Current status of the Journal.
Introduction
Background to New Journal of Physics
Current status of the Journal.
Electronic-only refereeing
What next?
Notes for first body slide

3. New Journal of Physics - the beginning.
The idea for NJP was born in 1996.
Partnership of IOP with the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft (DPG) signed April 1998.
Editorial Board in place by August 1998.
First articles published on 18 Dec 1998.
Original idea originated from the brainstorm session - however the bit of the story that sticks in my mind is that it was, as all good ideas are generally born, aided by the presence of alcohol.
The partnership with the DPG was signed in ??/
The Editorial Board were in place by August and following a board meeting later in August the NJP web site went live. The main reason for the web site with no articles was to show potential authors what the actual journal was going to look like. It was all very well having the idea of an electronic journal but whilst it was still a virtual journal people had difficulty imagining what it would look like.
So by Dec 98 we had ???? Submissions and 2 articles accepted for publication and ready to go live. At this point we had to decide if it was better to wait until we had more articles, or launch the journal with the 2 accepted articles.
As there was a great deal of interest in the NJP web site and we had received over ???00 enquiries asking when the first articles were due to go live, we decided to launch with the 2. This did have the possibility of being detrimental and creating the wrong image for the journal, however what we felt at the time was that as NJP was to have an image of outstanding articles, then the two articles gave a feeling of exclusiveness - and also gave other potential authors examples of what type of article we were looking for.
18 December company meeting!

4. Editorial policy and Journal content:
NJP: Key Features (I)
Editorial policy and Journal content:
scientific quality
broad coverage
high interest
Web based - all electronic (njp.org)
submissions, peer review, proofs, web access
multimedia, additional data, colour photos
linking
articles published incrementally
full text in HTML and PDF
NJP’s goal is to publish outstanding research articles from across the whole breadth of physics. Papers will be rigorously peer reviewed. The journal is free for all time with no access charges.
The journal will be financed by article charges paid by authors.
Partnership between IOP and DPG - the two largest physical societies in Europe.
Electronic journal - multimedia, links, commentaries
The first test for any journal is its ability to attract and retain authors.
In the case of NJP we are looking for a small number of high quality submissions. Why should authors submit to NJP?
Prestige and visibilityNo
Not a ‘digitised version of a printed jnl - truly ‘digital jnl

5. NJP: Key Features (II) Publishing model Partnership
free to all readers
article charge ($500) for published authors
Partnership
Institute of Physics and German Physical Society
Dutch, Polish, Australian and Swiss Physical Societies joined as Associates

9. State of Utah acceptance and promotion 83 Submissions to date
Current Status of NJP
SPARC endorsement in 1999
State of Utah acceptance and promotion
83 Submissions to date
28 papers accepted and published online
11 currently being reviewed, 2 accepted
42 rejected as unsuitable for the Journal
4th largest down-load Journal of IOPP
So what was the ideal NJP article?
This was discussed at great length by the Editorial Board and it was decided that the ideal NJP article should have an abstract and introduction that could be read and understood by non-specialists, but that the main body of the article should contain enough information for a specialist in the field to check the results.
This is a tall order for a research paper and to an extent the Editors are still coaching authors to make their articles more suitable for NJP.
Of the 12 articles published, X have links to further data and supplementary material, including movies and animation. ….
X reviewed - at various stages of the review process.
X rejected - some were actually unsuitable for any of our journals - and others were too specialised for NJP.

10. Current Status of NJP (29/Feb/00)
Web access statistics
56,823 hits to the TOC
31,454 from registered sites
25,369 from unregistered sites
14,397 PDF full text download
6,508 from unregistered sites
7,889 from registered sites
19,019 HTML full text download
6,916 from unregistered sites
12,103 from registered sites

11. A few concerns
Computer incompatibility
File formats and size of files
How to get information to referees without hitting information overload.
How to communicate the success to authors...
Access to web site

12. Feedback from physicists...
Positive feedback from referees…
“Yes I like the refereeing procedure this way. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
“…viewing the images on the computer is an improvement because of the better resolution and colours. The animated GIF files worked well and gave me an even better impression of the high quality work of Stone et al.”

13. What next?
Aiming to publish at least 60 articles by December 2000
Maintain the high visibility and high number of web accesses and downloads
Continue to encourage authors to use the full potential of the Journal and include multimedia etc.
Invoice authors - in progress

14. Reaction
Reaction from readers.
“I got through... and quite liked the presentation of the online journal. I also hope that in the course of time more use of coloured and animated figures and hypertext will be made by the authors the new possibilities of an online journal are certainly tempting. I offer my services as a referee, in case you should need them!”
“A free journal - excellent news!”

15. And finally ...
Please visit njp.org and see for yourself
Thank you for listening