News & Comment

February 22, 2023 marks an important milestone. We celebrate the fifth anniversary of Communications Physics.

Communications Physics is five years old. So we are celebrating, with a special anniversary collection. And as we do every day with exciting physics papers, we take a moment to reflect on our journey so far and our future direction.

While gender disparities in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines are widely noted, the citation gap is still understudied and awareness remains low. Here, we address citation inequity in physics and describe individual and collective mitigation initiatives, including the citation diversity statement.

All human activity generates a carbon footprint and scientific research is no exception; however, given the diversity in research activity, developing a standard approach to monitor environmental impact is complex. In this comment, the authors propose a framework for scientists to self-report emissions of research-related emissions in their papers as a means to gradually build an overview of the potential carbon footprint of scientific activity.

In January 2019, we announced to our authors and referees that Communications Physics would adopt Transparent Peer Review (TPR). What does this mean and how has it been received?

In order for terahertz devices to reach technological maturity, robust characterization methods and reliable metrics for comparison between studies must be defined. In this comment, the authors describe the challenges faced in obtaining robust power measurements in the terahertz regime, and summarize recent efforts to establish standards for this field.

Science diplomacy has become an important dimension of international relations. Here’s a take on the past, present and future of fusion science diplomacy and the role such big collaborative endeavours play in shaping the future of this field in the international political sphere.

Global events in the past year has made prescient a long-standing debate on the definition and suitability of impact and novelty as criteria for publication in selective journals. Reflecting on this issue, Prof Andrea Armani and Prof Jerry Lee argue that rigour and reproducibility is, in fact, more crucial.

Emergency action in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to the removal of financial and regulatory barriers to developing medical technologies. But, as Andrea Armani and Eric Diebold explain, a broader cultural shift in academia can expedite their translation from laboratory benches to real-world use.

Göttingen is home to the Third Infinity conference, a biennial event organized by Ph.D. candidates that aims, beyond discussing complex systems physics, at providing a platform to discuss themes central to doctoral life and education. As part of the organizing committee of Third Infinity 2020, in this comment we would like to raise attention on the main issues faced by today’s European interdisciplinary Ph.D. students as we learnt them from direct experience during the organization process, as well as from discussion with our peers during the event.

Trust is the theme of this year’s peer review week. Confidence in the most broadly used form of assessment, and often considered a quality seal, of scholarly communication, remains high. However, the continuously evolving means of disseminating science and the exponential growth of research output require journals to do more to reassure their authors and readers on the rigour of peer review, while maintaining an open dialogue aimed at improving the system.

Executable papers take transparency and openness in research communication one step further. In this comment, an early career researcher reports her experience of creating an executable paper as a journey through Open Science.

This month marks the 60th anniversary of the invention of the laser. Here, we highlight a few of the many developments of a technology that has revolutionised our lives. To celebrate, our editors have chosen a collection of articles published in Communications Physics that showcase the breath of research and applications in this field.

What is the path towards a physical theory of complex networked systems? With an eye to the historical maths-physics duality, and an outlook towards the future, this commentary discusses promises and challenges accompanying the convergence of formal graph theory and data-inspired network science.

Communications Physics is 2 years old. To celebrate, we look back at our achievements and put together a collection of our editors’ favourite papers. We will renew this collection over the months to share with our community what we like the most.

Matching each submitted paper to the right reviewers is a crucial task, and for authors it can be an opaque process. Here, we aim to reveal the ethos and procedures an editor typically follows at Communications Physics when selecting reviewers.

Recognition of the contribution made by reviewers to the publication of high quality research may take many forms. We are passionate about ensuring quality in peer review and discuss here how to acknowledge our reviewers fairly.

The anapole, a non-radiating charge-current configuration, was recently observed in a variety of artificial materials and nanostructures. We provide a brief overview of this rapidly developing field and discuss implications for spectroscopy, energy materials, electromagnetics, as well as quantum and nonlinear optics.

The concept of non-Hermitian parity-time reversal symmetry in optics has given rise to a vast amount of research aimed at exploring some of the exotic features displayed by photonics systems. The authors present a brief account of the state-of-the-art on non-Hermitian photonics and provide their perspective on the topic.

Communications Physics celebrates its first year anniversary of publishing research advances across the physical sciences. We take this opportunity to look back at what we achieved so far and our ambitions for the future.