Browsing the Institute of Physics list of journals, I noticed a new one, IoP SciNotes, which is "dedicated to the rapid publication of shorter research outputs across the physical and environmental sciences, including new results of any type (novel, negative or reproduced) or descriptions of scientifically valuable methods and datasets."
Allowing negative results, reproductions of existing results, or just descriptions of datasets, among other things, is an important thing to do. Negative results are important to document, but unless you can spin them in the right way, they can be hard to publish. Datasets that you may never get round to analysing yourself now have a home, and short descriptions of methods or techniques that don't quite feel enough for a full paper, too.
The journal is open access and will introduce an article processing charge in future, but for early submitters, there is no charge.
The subject matter covers all of physics (but not astronomy thanks to an agreement with an existing similar journal in astronomy), and I would certainly encourage my nuclear physics readers to ensure that the journal reflects our field as much as any other. I should start with my own contribution...
The question is whether one needs the article-processing charge at all. The Open Journal of Astrophysics is a refereed journal which uses arXiv for distribution (a so-called overlay journal, quite common in maths, I am told). The costs are negligible and covered by donations.
ReplyDeletehttps://astro.theoj.org/
Since it uses the Scholastica platform, you don't even have to set up the infrastructure.
The "publish for free now" seems like a scheme to get users fixed, then charge them later.
One can debate whether one needs a paper journal at all. Some traditional journals are now online only. Why duplicate the electronic publication when arXiv already does it, and in many fields most people read stuff at arXiv anyway?