Skip to main content
Log in

Aims and scope

Hadron Physics

Hadron Structure
Hadron Spectroscopy
Hadronic and Electroweak Interactions of Hadrons
Nonperturbative Approaches to QCD
Phenomenological Approaches to Hadron Physics

Nuclear and Quark Matter

Heavy-Ion Collisions
Phase Diagram of the Strong Interaction
Hard Probes
Quark-Gluon Plasma and Hadronic Matter
Relativistic Transport and Hydrodynamics
Compact Stars

Nuclear Physics

Nuclear Structure and Reactions
Few-Body Systems
Radioactive Beams
Electroweak Interactions
Nuclear Astrophysics

Article Categories

Letters (Open Access)
Invited Viewpoints and Perspectives
Regular Articles
New Tools and Techniques
Reviews
Code Papers
Comments and Replies

Letters: must describe new and original work deserving rapid publication. Their aim is to concisely report on important theoretical, computational or experimental results or on sufficiently substantiated concepts, with a significant (potential) impact on the broader development in one of the fields covered by the journal. In order to allow a rapid refereeing and decision procedure and to better address a broad readership, Letters should not exceed 4 printed pages in EPJ A format, and should include no more than 4 figures and/or tables.

Invited Viewpoints and Perspectives: are by invitation only and serve the purpose of initiating targeted, high-level discussions on open scientific issues, or on more speculative but truly innovative and promising ideas for the future development of the field. Their format style is similar to that of regular Letters.  While external proposals for new, and comments on previously published Invited Viewpoints and Perspectives are possible, the decision to act on them rests solely with the editors in charge of this section.

Regular Articles: describe original work, or provide details of original work previously published in a Letter article. There is no general limitation of the overall size nor of the number of figures, nor of the level of details considered to be necessary.

New Tools and Techniques: are articles presenting original and new developments of particle detectors, readout electronics, computational methods, theoretical frameworks or analysis tools. An important subgroup are articles detailing specific aspects of importance to understand and assess either the formalism sketched in a theoretical resp. computational paper, or the analysis tools that lead to the physics results presented in experimental collaboration papers. Direct relevance to physics topics within the “Aims and Scopes” must be demonstrated. Technical details (including but not limited to construction drawings, electronic circuit diagrams or computer codes) may be added as electronic-only supplementary material.

Reviews: are by invitation only through the Editorial Board. There is no general limit to the overall length. Reviews may contain, but should not be restricted to, original work. Reviews, when addressing also non-specialist audiences, will benefit from a sufficient amount of introductory resp. background material in order to strengthen their pedagogical aspects. Reviews will fall into one of the following categories:
1) Comprehensive reviews of major topics within the "Aims and Scope" of EPJA. Their primary assets will be pedagogical exposition, synthesis of key developments, and the inclusion of a definitive and representative bibliography.
2) Technical papers presenting an extensive review of a specialist topic within the "Aims and Scope".
3) Reviews of a newly emerging field, providing an up-to-date synthesis and an extended discussion of the open questions. The discussion is expected to lead to an assessment of the possible further developments within the field, potentially making a substantial contribution to guiding decisions concerning the planning or running of experimental and observational facilities.
4) Outstanding thesis or working reports, the richness and importance of whose details justify the exceptional publication of the full length work.

Code Papers: While EPJ A does not publish computer codes per se it encourages the submission of papers, where a computer code is an essential part of the described original work, provided the underlying physics is by itself of sufficient novelty and relevance to be considered for the journal. A further prerequisite is that the relevant code itself has already been deposited in a relevant DOI-minting repository, with enough details provided for its actual testing and benchmarking.  The code must be clearly referenced in the submitted paper via DOI and any version numbering where applicable. Similarly, new versions of previously released code can only be considered if they are directly connected to a similar, significant advance in the treatment of the underlying physics compared to the published literature.
Referees appointed to assess relevant submissions will then be pointed to the code and be asked to perform tests of usability and reproducibility as part of the refereeing procedure. Any accepted paper will be considered as having documented sufficient evidence for the related code meeting its intended purposes in the general sense of refereeing and approving scientific material. In particular, clear instructions on how to download and install the program, as well as a simple use case, are expected to be provided both in the published source code (e.g. in a README file) and in the article.
The LATEX templates of EPJA contain a section “Program Summary and Specifications” which must be activated to provide some very specific information about the code in the introductory section of the paper and to signal to the editorial board of the journal that some (novel) code is to be associated with the results presented.

Comments and Replies: include discussion and commentary addressing significant aspects of the original paper but without a) representing essentially new papers, b) delving into too much detail, or c) becoming personal. They should address non-trivial aspects that will interest readers other than the authors of the comment and the original paper. They should not exceed two printed pages in the EPJ format and should not include an abstract.

 

Navigation