Processing and publication are free of charge. There is no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles.
- Editor-in-Chief
- Co-Editor-in-Chief
- Statistics Editor
- Publicity Manager
- Editorial Assistant
- Language Editor
- Ethics Editor
- Editorial Board Member
Physics and Astronomy Reports aims to contribute to the scientific knowledge in all areas of physics and astronomy. It is an open-acces, peer-reviewed and international journal published semiannually in June and December.
The journal is devoted to publish original research and review articles written in English. Original and high quality research articles, review articles (by invitation only), and high-quality conference proceedings (in special issues by the approval of the editorial board) are welcome. The journal targets international and national communities.
Processing and publication are free of charge with the journal. There is no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles.
- NASA/ADS
The journal is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and pays regard to Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing
The subjects covered in the manuscripts submitted to the journal for publication must be in accordance with the aim and scope of the journal. Only those manuscripts approved by every individual author and that were not published before or sent to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.
Changing the name of an author (omission, addition or order) in papers submitted to the Journal requires written permission from all the declared authors.
Plagiarism, duplication, fraudulent authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, salami slicing/salami publication, breaching copyrights, and prevailing conflicts of interest are unethical behaviors. All manuscripts that are not in accordance with accepted ethical standards will be removed from publication. This also includes any possible malpractice discovered after publication.
Plagiarism:
Submitted manuscripts that pass the preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. If plagiarism/self-plagiarism is found, the authors will be informed of it. Editors may resubmit the manuscript for a similarity check at any peer-review or production stage if required. High similarity scores may lead to rejection of the manuscript before and even after acceptance. Depending on the type of article and the percentage of the similarity score taken from each article, the overall similarity score is generally expected to be less than 15 or 20%.
Double Blind Peer-Review:
After the plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by the editors-in-chief for their originality, methodology, importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope. The editor provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles and hands over the papers matching the formal rules to at least two national/international referees for evaluation and gives green light for publication upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.
The journal is open access and all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Except for commercial purposes, users are allowed to read, download, copy, print, search, or link to the full text of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
The open access articles in the journal are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.
All expenses of the journal are covered by Istanbul University. The processing and publication are free of charge. There are no article processing charges or submission fees for any submitted or accepted articles.
Authors publishing with the journal retain the copyright to their work licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) and grant the Publisher non-exclusive commercial right to publish the work. CC BY-NC 4.0 license permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The editor should consider publishing corrections if minor errors that do not affect the results, interpretations and conclusions of the published paper are detected. The editor should consider retraction if major errors and/or misconduction invalidate results and conclusions are detected.
The editors should consider issuing an expression of concern if there is evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are not reliable and institutions of the authors do not investigate the case or the possible investigation seems to be unfair or nonconclusive.
The COPE and ICJME guidelines are considered for correction, retractions or expression of concern.
Retraction
Journal follows COPE’s Retraction Guidelines in case of retraction.
The editor has the right to retract an article if:
- There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable; either as a result of a major error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g. of data) or falsification (e.g. image manipulation).
- It contains plagiarised content.
- It has been published elsewhere without proper attribution.
- It contains material or data without authorisation for use.
- There is copyright infringement or there is some other serious legal issue.
- It reports unethical research.
- There is evidence that the peer-review process is compromised or manipulated.
- The author(s) failed to disclose a significant competing interest (also known as a conflict of interest) that, in the opinion of the editor, would have unduly influenced the interpretation of the work or the recommendations of the editors and peer reviewers.
In case of retraction the following steps are followed:
- Retraction notice including article title is published in a subsequent issue of the journal. The retraction notice is paginated and listed in the table of contents.
- A link is provided between the retraction notice and the original article in the electronic version.
- The online article is preceded by a page containing the retraction notice; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
- The original article remains unchanged, except for a watermark on the .pdf on each page stating that it has been "retracted”.
Article Removal for Legal Reasons
In the following circumstances, except the metadata (title and authors), the text of the article is removed and a page informing that the article has been removed for legal reasons replaces the article.
- The article is found to be defamatory or to infringe the legal rights of others, and retraction is not deemed to be an adequate solution.
- The article has been, or is reasonably likely to be the subject of a court order.
- There is a significant risk to public health.
To guarantee that all papers published in the journal are maintained and permanently accessible, articles are stored in Dergipark, which serves as a national archival website and simultaneously permits LOCKSS to collect, preserve, and serve content.
Additionally, the authors are encouraged to self-archive the final PDF version of their articles in open electronic archives, which conform to the standards of the Open Archives Initiative (https://www.openarchives.org/). Authors should provide a link from the deposited version to the URL of IUPress journal website.
Physics and Astronomy Reports is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and pays regard to Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) on https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing
All submissions must be original, unpublished (including full text in conference proceedings), and not under the review of any other publication. The authors must ensure that the submitted work is original in nature. They must certify that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere, in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions must be followed. Copyright materials (e.g., tables, figures or extensive quotations) must be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Any work or words by other authors, contributors, or sources must be appropriately credited and referenced.
Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees using a double-blind peer review process. Plagiarism, duplication, fraudulant authorship/denied authorship, research/data fabrication, salami slicing/salami publication, breaching of copyrights, and prevailing conflicts of interest are unethical behaviors. All manuscripts that are not in accordance with accepted ethical standards will be removed from publication. This also includes any possible malpractice discovered after publication.
Physics and Astronomy Reports adheres to the highest standards in research ethics and follows the principles of international research ethics as defined below. The authors are responsible for the compliance of the manuscripts with ethical rules.
- Principles of integrity, quality and transparency should be sustained in designing the research, reviewing the design and conducting the research.
- The research team and participants should be fully informed about the aims, methods, possible uses,requirements of the research, and risks of participation in research.
- The confidentiality of the information provided by the research participants and the confidentiality of the respondents should be ensured. The research should be designed to protect the autonomy and dignity of the participants.
- Research participants should voluntarily participate in the research, not under any coercion.
- Any possible harm to the participants must be avoided. Research should be planned in such a way that the participants are not at risk.
- The independence of research must be clear, and any conflicts of interest must be disclosed.
- In experimental studies with human subjects, written informed consent from the participants who decided to participate in the research must be obtained. In the case of children and those under wardship or with confirmed insanity, legal custodian assent must be obtained.
- If the study is to be carried out in any institution or organization, approval must be obtained from that institution or organization.
- In studies with human subjects, it must be noted in the method section of the manuscript that the informed consent of the participants and ethics committee approval from the institution where the study was conducted have been obtained.
The authors are responsible for ensuring that the article is in accordance with scientific and ethical standards and rules. The authors must ensure that the submitted work is original in nature. They must certify that the manuscript has not already been published or submitted elsewhere, in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions must be followed. Copyright materials (e.g., tables, figures or extensive quotations) must be reproduced only with appropriate permission and acknowledgement. Any work or words by other authors, contributors, or sources must be appropriately credited and referenced.
All the authors of the submitted manuscript must have direct scientific and academic contributions to the manuscript. The author(s) of the original research articles is defined as a person who is significantly involved in “conceptualization and design of the study”, “collecting the data”, “analyzing the data”, “writing the manuscript”, “reviewing the manuscript with a critical perspective” and “planning/conducting the study of the manuscript and/or revising it”. Fund raising, data collection and supervision of the research group are not sufficient roles to be accepted as authors. The author(s) must meet all these criteria described above. The order of names in the author list of an article must be a co-decision and must be indicated in the Copyright Agreement Form.
Individuals who do not meet the authorship criteria but have contributed to the study must take place in the acknowledgement section. Individuals providing technical support, general support, material, financial support and assisting in writing are examples to be indicated in the acknowledgement section.
All authors must disclose any issues concerning financial relationships, conflicts of interest, and competing interests that may potentially influence the results of the research or scientific judgment. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published paper, it is the author’s obligation to promptly cooperate with the editor-in-chief to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
The editor-in-chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious beliefs or the authors’political philosophy. He/She provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles for publication and ensures that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.
The editor-in-chief is responsible for the content and overall quality of publications. He/She must publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
The editor-in-chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers. Only he has the full authority to assign a reviewer and is responsible for the final decision to publish the manuscripts in the journal.
The reviewers must have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, authors and/or research funders. Their judgment must be objective.
Reviewers must ensure that all information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.
A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse him/herself from the review process.
The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other people. The anonymity of referees must be ensured. In particular situations, the editor may share a review by one reviewer with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.
Only those manuscripts approved by every individual author and that were not published before or submitted to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.
Submitted manuscripts that pass the preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. After the plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by the editor-in-chief for their originality, methodology, importance of the subject covered, and compliance with the journal scope.
The editor hands over the papers matching the formal rules to at least two national/international referees for double-blind peer review evaluation and gives green light for publication upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.
The editor-in-chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious beliefs or the authors’political philosophy. He/She provides a fair double-blind peer review of the submitted articles for publication and ensures that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.
The editor-in-chief is responsible for the content and overall quality of publications. He/She must publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
The editor-in-chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers. Only he has the full authority to assign a reviewer and is responsible for the final decision to publish the manuscripts in the journal.
The reviewers must have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, authors and/or research funders. Their judgment must be objective.
Reviewers must ensure that all information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.
A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse him/herself from the review process.
The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other people. The anonymity of referees must be ensured. In particular situations, the editor may share a review by one reviewer with other reviewers to clarify a particular point.
Only those manuscripts approved by every individual author and that were not published before or submitted to another journal, are accepted for evaluation.
Submitted manuscripts that pass the preliminary control are scanned for plagiarism using iThenticate software. After the plagiarism check, the eligible ones are evaluated by the editor-in-chief for their originality, methodology, importance of the subject covered and compliance with the journal scope. Editor-in-chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, religious belief or political philosophy of the authors and ensures a fair double-blind peer review of the selected manuscripts.
The selected manuscripts are sent to at least two national/international external referees for evaluation, and publication decision is made by the editor-in-chief upon modification by the authors in accordance with the referees’ claims.
Editor-in-chief does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors, and reviewers and is responsible for the final decision for publication of the manuscript in the journal.
The reviewers’ judgments must be objective. Reviewers’ comments on the following aspects are expected during the review.
- Does the manuscript contain new and significant information?
- Does the abstract clearly and accurately describe the content of the manuscript?
- Is this problem significant and concisely stated?
- Are the methods comprehensively described?
- Are the interpretations and conclusions justified by the results?
- Is adequate reference made to other works in the field?
- Is the language acceptable?
Reviewers must ensure that all information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.
A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse him/herself from the review process.
The editor informs the reviewers that the manuscripts are confidential information, and that this is a privileged interaction. The reviewers and editorial board cannot discuss the manuscripts with other people. The anonymity of the referees is important.
1. The publication language of the journal is English
2. Authors are required to submit Copyright Agreement Form, Author Form and Title Page together with the main manuscript document
3. Manuscripts should be prepared using the article template in Latex format
4. Due to double-blind peer review, the main manuscript document must not include any author information.
5. Title page should be submitted together with the main manuscript document and should include the information below:
- Category of the manuscript
- The title of the manuscript.
- All authors’ names and affiliations (institution, faculty/department, city, country), e-mail addresses, and ORCIDs.
- Information of the corresponding author (in addition to the author's information e-mail address, open correspondence address, and mobile phone number).
- Financial support
- Conflict of interest.
- Acknowledgment.
6. Submitted manuscripts should have an abstract of 150-250 words before the introduction, summarizing the scope, the purpose, the results of the study, and the methodology used. Under the abstract, a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 6 keywords that inform the reader about the content of the study should be specified.
7. The manuscripts should contain mainly these components: title, abstract and keywords; sections, references, tables and figures. The main text of research articles should include introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusion and references subheadings.
8. Tables and figures should be given with a number and a caption. Every Figure or Table should be referred within the text of the article in numerical order with no abbreviations (ie: Table 1, Figure 1)
9. References should be prepared in line with Harvard reference system. For information: https://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/harvard-referencing/
10. Authors are responsible for all statements made in their work submitted to the journal for publication.
Physics and Astronomy Reports complies with Harvard system for referencing and in-text citations. For information: https://www.easybib.com/guides/citation-guides/harvard-referencing/ Accuracy of citations is the author’s responsibility. All references should be cited in the text. It is strongly recommended that authors use Reference Management Software such as Zotero, Mendeley, etc.
Please ensure the following:
- The title page was prepared according to the journal rules.
- This manuscript has not been submitted to any other journal.
- The manuscript has been checked for English language.
- The manuscript was written in accordance with the full-text writing rules determined by the journal.
- The manuscript has an abstract of 150-250 words and the number of keywords should be 3-6.
- The references are in line with the Harvard reference system.
- The Copyright Agreement Form has been filled in and is ready for submission together with the manuscript.
- The Author Contribution Form has been filled in and is ready for submission together with the manuscript.
- Permission for previously published copyrighted material (text,figure,table) has been obtained if used in the present manuscript.
- The Ethics Committee Report (if necessary) has been obtained and ready for submission together with the manuscript, and the ethics committee report date and number have been given in the manuscript text.
- Review of the journal policies.
- All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.