Europhysics News

About Europhysics News

Europhysics News — Journal Profile

Europhysics News (EPN) is the magazine of the European physics community. It is owned by the European Physical Society (EPS) and produced in cooperation with EDP Sciences, and it has been the community's shared magazine since 1969. It is distributed to all EPS individual members and to many institutional subscribers, with most European national physical societies receiving it for further distribution; the journal's own about page puts its total readership at about 54,000 per issue. Its print ISSN is 0531-7479 and its online ISSN is 1432-1092, the pair carried on this JournalsWorld record and confirmed in the OpenAlex source record resolved from those ISSNs. Readers should understand from the outset what kind of publication this is: not a primary research journal of new results, but the European Physical Society's magazine — review articles, features on advanced topics, news reports and items of general interest, written largely by volunteers from the community it serves.

History and identity

Europhysics News was born with the European Physical Society itself. The EPS was founded in 1968 to give European physics a single continental voice, and the magazine's own media kit dates the title's birth to 1969 — the volume numbering confirms the chronology, with volume 50 appearing in 2019 and volume 54 in 2023. From its outset, as one of its own anniversary editorials put it, the magazine reached across the continent's Cold War divide: contributions from officials, staff and members involved with the young society were being gathered in its pages decades later to mark that founding role, and the editorial noted that EPS had reached across the iron curtain from the beginning and contributed in its own way to the development of the Europe of today. That is the correct frame for the title's identity — EPN is the printed (and now digital) common room of a federation of national physical societies, and its archive is as much a record of European physics as an organisation as it is a record of physics itself.

The magazine's working shape has been stable for years. EPS describes it, in its newsletter pages, as the bi-monthly news magazine of the EPS, publishing review articles by outstanding physicists and other items of interest to members; the publisher's 2019 media kit plans five issues a year, including a combined final number, and quotes a print circulation of about 25,000 copies. Issues are also released as online flipbooks and as registered documents on the journal's own site. The 2023 planning described by the editor shows how an issue is built: the editorial advisory board meets each autumn and, with the editors, chooses mini-themes for the coming year's issues — the January issue following the field of that year's Nobel Prize in Physics, an educational or societal theme in spring, an interdisciplinary field in June, a technical physics field in September, and a special issue highlighting a particular field or the physics of an important societal question.

Scope and subjects

The journal's about page states its aim directly: to provide physicists at all levels, from postgraduate students to senior managers working in industry and the public sector, with a balanced overview of the scientific and organisational aspects of physics and related disciplines at a European level. It does this by publishing review articles, features on advanced topics, news reports and items of general interest, organised in sections the journal names as Activities, Features, News and Views, and Reports. In practice that means an issue can carry a feature on a neighbouring discipline — the European Mathematical Society introducing itself to physicists, in one memorable example — beside spotlights on new research results, young researchers and new experiments, society business, education and policy reporting, and the history of the community itself. The "In the Spotlights" strand invites short contributions putting a new result, a young researcher or a new experiment in front of the whole European readership.

Because EPN is a magazine, its notion of scope is a readership, not a subject boundary: anything that a European physicist should know about — a breakthrough in a neighbouring field, a facility opening, a policy fight, a piece of physics history, a sister society's work — is in scope when it is written for the whole community rather than for specialists alone. Its review and feature articles are written to be read outside their author's subfield, which is precisely the skill the magazine's editors cultivate and the reason its features are so often the first place a busy physicist meets a new area.

Owner, editors and editorial practice

Ownership sits with the European Physical Society, and production is in cooperation with EDP Sciences, the French learned-society publisher that also produces the EPS's research journals. EPS listings name Els de Wolf as the Editor of Europhysics News, working with an Editorial Advisory Board; a 2023 account from within the Italian Physical Society names Ferenc Igloi as the magazine's Science Editor, the person to contact with a feature proposal, and describes the annual board meeting at which the year's themes are chosen. The journal's about page makes a point an author should not miss: most contributors to Europhysics News are volunteers, and their work is greatly appreciated by the Editor and the Editorial Advisory Board. This is a community magazine run on community labour, edited professionally — a model closer to a national society's magazine than to a commercial journal.

Editorial practice follows from that model. Feature content is substantially planned and invited around the year's chosen mini-themes and the special issue, while unsolicited contributions have historically been welcomed — anniversary editorials have explicitly encouraged readers to write up accounts and submit them to the Editor — and the Spotlights strand is a standing open door for short pieces. Authors should not expect the apparatus of a research journal: there is no article processing charge structure for community magazine contributions that could be verified from the publisher's public pages, and no impact-factor-driven editorial triage; the tests are interest, clarity and service to the whole European readership.

Metrics and standing

Magazine metrics need careful handling, and this profile reports them with their source and their limits. OpenAlex, resolved through its ISSN endpoint to source S32491150 at the time of checking, records 3,124 works for Europhysics News with 17,568 citations, an h-index of 40 and an i10-index of 215, with coverage running from 1968 and the large majority of works — 2,917 — recorded as open access. Those numbers are real, but they count magazine items: features, news pieces and reports accumulate citations of a different kind from research articles, and an h-index of 40 for a community magazine says more about five decades of continuous presence in European physics libraries than about competition with research journals. This record's stored indicators give an h-index of 19 from a different database; both figures are reported here as their sources give them. The standing that matters for EPN is better expressed in its own terms: distribution to every EPS individual member, onward distribution by most European national societies, a readership of about 54,000 per issue on the journal's own count and a print circulation of about 25,000 copies in the publisher's media kit — reach, in a community sense, that most European physics titles cannot match.

A final word on standing: EPN's authority in its community does not rest on any metric at all, and treating it as if it did is the one error a directory reader can make with this title. Its authority is constitutional — it is the magazine of the federation to which Europe's national physical societies belong, edited under that federation's name since the year after the federation was founded. When EPN takes up an education question, a research-policy fight or a piece of community history, it speaks with the society's voice to the society's members, in a way no commercial physics magazine can imitate. Authors and editors who understand that will use the title well: cite its features for the state of a field and its history, and look to its research siblings for primary results.

Indexing and access

Europhysics News is published on its own platform at europhysicsnews.org and in flipbook form through the EPS site, with articles carrying DOIs under the EDP Sciences prefix 10.1051/epn. The DOAJ search API returned no record for either of the journal's ISSNs when checked for this profile — unsurprising for a society magazine, whose open reading is delivered through its own site rather than through the open access journal system. OpenAlex records the title's works as overwhelmingly open access in practice. Readers tracing an EPN citation should use the DOI where one is given, and otherwise the volume and issue numbering, which has run without a break since 1969.

How to contribute

Start from the magazine's own routes in. A feature idea belongs, in the first instance, with the Editor or the Science Editor: the magazine plans its year thematically, so a proposal that fits a forthcoming mini-theme — the Nobel field, an educational or societal theme, an interdisciplinary or technical field, or the special issue's subject — has a natural home, and the editors' annual planning cycle means proposals land best in the autumn before the year they target. A short, timely piece belongs in the Spotlights strand, which exists to put a new research result, a young researcher or the start of a new experiment in front of the European community. News, reports and society items go through the Editor and the Editorial Advisory Board, whose members are drawn from the national societies. In every case the writing test is the magazine's own: could a physicist from another subfield, another country and another sector read this with profit? Write to that reader — explain the background a specialist would skip, keep the organisational and European dimension in view, and the piece is an EPN piece.

Related journals

EPN sits inside a family of EPS publications that a European physicist reads together. Its research siblings are EPL — Europhysics Letters, print ISSN 0295-5075 and online ISSN 1286-4854, the community's letters journal for short reports of important new results — and the European Journal of Physics, devoted to maintaining and improving the standard of taught physics. The society's e-EPS newsletter carries the faster, shorter news stream between magazine issues. Readers should not confuse Europhysics News with EPL: the two share an owner, a publisher partnership and the Europhysics name, but one is a magazine of features and news while the other is a peer-reviewed research letters journal, and their ISSNs are entirely different. On JournalsWorld, EPN's neighbours are the physics titles in the science listings, where the ISSN pair 0531-7479 / 1432-1092 anchors this record.

Inside the archive: five decades of European physics

The flipbook and PDF archive rewards browsing in a way few journal archives do, because the magazine chronicled the building of European physics itself. Anniversary issues gathered testimony from the society's founders and early staff about creating a continental organisation in a divided Europe. Nobel issues each January translate the newest prize into a guided tour for non-specialists. Features cross borders on purpose: a president of the European Mathematical Society explaining her society to physicists, facility reports from new experiments, education and policy coverage from across the member societies. Read across a decade, the Reports and Activities sections form a continuous minutes-book of European physics — conferences, prizes, society affairs, historic sites and young-minds networks — while the Features carry the science. For a historian of modern European science, that combination is the archive's real value, and it is a large part of why the title's citation record, unusual as it is for a magazine, keeps growing.

How an issue is made, and why it works

The production model deserves a section of its own, because it explains the magazine's durability. An EPN issue begins more than a year before publication, at the autumn meeting where the Editor, the science editors and the Editorial Advisory Board fix the coming year's mini-themes and the special issue's subject. That calendar — Nobel field in January, education or society in spring, an interdisciplinary field in June, a technical field in September — is not a marketing device; it is how a small editorial team guarantees breadth across a discipline that would otherwise fill every issue from its largest subfields. Around the themed features, the standing sections do the community's housekeeping: Activities carries the life of the society and its divisions and groups, News and Views carries argument and announcement, Reports carries meetings and facilities, and Spotlights carries the short, fast pieces that keep each issue current. Contributors are mostly volunteers — researchers who write the feature they were asked for because their national society or their collaboration put their name forward — and the editorial office's craft lies in turning specialist drafts into magazine prose a condensed-matter physicist and a plasma physicist can both finish.

Two practical consequences follow for readers and contributors. First, back-issue browsing by theme is unusually rewarding: because issues were planned as themed gatherings, a reader who opens the September technical issue or the special issue on a societal question gets a curated introduction to a field, not a random bundle of papers. Second, the magazine is a genuine career and community instrument in European physics: a Spotlight on a young researcher or a new experiment reaches, in one step, the individual members of the EPS and, through the national societies, departmental common rooms across the continent — the journal's own figures of roughly 54,000 readers per issue and some 25,000 print copies describe a distribution machine that research journals, for all their prestige, do not possess. That is also why EPN features are so often a physicist's first publication in a neighbouring field's debate, and why the magazine's editors guard its readability so carefully: the audience is everyone, and everyone is busy.

Frequently asked questions

What are the ISSNs of Europhysics News?

Print ISSN 0531-7479 and online ISSN 1432-1092, confirmed in the OpenAlex source record for the title.

Who owns and publishes Europhysics News?

It is owned by the European Physical Society and produced in cooperation with EDP Sciences, as stated on the journal's about page.

When did Europhysics News begin?

1969, according to the publisher's media kit; volume 50 appeared in 2019, which fits that start date.

Is Europhysics News a research journal?

No. It is the EPS's community magazine, publishing review articles, features, news reports and items of general interest. The EPS's research letters journal is EPL, a separate title with different ISSNs.

Who reads Europhysics News?

It is distributed to all EPS individual members and many institutional subscribers, and most European national societies receive it for further distribution; the journal puts its total readership at about 54,000 per issue.

Who edits Europhysics News?

EPS listings name Els de Wolf as Editor, working with an Editorial Advisory Board; Ferenc Igloi has been named as Science Editor in the society's own accounts of the magazine's planning.

Can I submit a feature?

The magazine plans themed issues each year and invites feature proposals through its Editor and Science Editor, and its Spotlights strand takes short pieces on new results, young researchers and new experiments. Most contributors are volunteers from the physics community.

What do its citation metrics look like?

OpenAlex records 3,124 works, 17,568 citations and an h-index of 40 at the time of checking — figures that count magazine items across five decades and should be read as a measure of presence, not as a research-journal ranking.

Where can I read Europhysics News?

On the journal's own site, europhysicsnews.org, and in flipbook form through the European Physical Society's pages, where issues are posted as they appear. EPS members receive it as part of their membership distribution, and many national societies pass it on to their own members.

How often does Europhysics News appear?

The EPS describes it as its bi-monthly news magazine; the publisher's media kit plans five issues a year including a combined number, and volume numbering has run continuously since 1969.