Max Planck Society pledges financial support for New Journal of Physics

March 27, 2006

In a show of support for open-access publishing, the Max Planck Society (MPS) announced today that, with immediate effect, it would enter into an agreement with the open-access journal New Journal of Physics (NJP) [1]. The arrangement will see the Max Planck Society pay the NJP article publication charge centrally for all of its scientists who submit work to the journal, for an initial period, before the end of 2008.

"Receiving the endorsement of a research organization with the international stature of the Max Planck Society is a key development for New Journal of Physics and its open-access publishing model." said Ken Lillywhite, Journals Business Director at Institute of Physics Publishing. "We are delighted to maximize the opportunity for researchers at Max-Planck institutes to benefit from publishing with the journal and as a result look forward to the prospect of NJP establishing itself yet further as a premier research journal serving the whole physics community."

"The Max Planck Society is committed to open access. According to the Berlin Declaration [2] the MPS advocates the publication of scientific works in journals which are dedicated to open access" said Kurt Mehlhorn, Vice President of the Max Planck Society. "The MPS aims to find solutions that support further development of the existing financial framework of scientific publishing. I am strongly convinced that offering our scientists the opportunity to make their papers open access will be a success because it provides authors with extra choice and will improve access to published articles. Physicists from the MPS have been engaged in the development of the New Journal of Physics from the very beginning. Now we are happy to support our scientists to publish their results in this established open-access journal."

Co-owned by the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft and Institute of Physics, New Journal of Physics is an open-access, electronic-only journal publishing original research articles across the whole field of physics. Since 2001 the journal has grown by more than 900% and over 40,000 NJP articles are now downloaded each month. NJP’s official 2004 Impact Factor is 3.095.

Permanently free to read, NJP is funded solely by article publication charges.

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