Frequently asked questions

The following Journals are currently being offered:

• Migration Politics
• SciPost Astronomy
• SciPost Astronomy Core
• SciPost Chemistry
• SciPost Chemistry Core
• SciPost Physics
• SciPost Physics Codebases
• SciPost Physics Community Reports
• SciPost Physics Core
• SciPost Physics Lecture Notes
• SciPost Physics Proceedings
• SciPost Physics Reviews
• SciPost Selections

All SciPost Journals are subscription-free, two-way open access (free for readers, free for authors) online journals.

Manuscripts submitted to SciPost undergo the extremely stringent peer-witnessed refereeing process, guaranteeing that papers published in SciPost Journals meet the highest possible academic standards.

Because:

• you think your work can withstand the strictest form of pre-publication scrutiny: peer-witnessed refereeing
• you want your referees to have to adhere to the same standards of professionalism which are expected of you as an author
• you want the editorial process to be handled by professional scientists
• you think that copyright should be held by authors, not publishers
• you want your published work to be openly accessible and not hidden behind a paywall
• you do not think publishers should exploit your work for profit-making
• you do not think that author(s) should be paying publication costs

After registering as a Contributor, simply follow the Manuscript submission procedure.

This is a short summary; for a more detailed description, see our editorial procedure.

• Reports are gathered from editorially-invited referees, but can also be volunteered by registered SciPost Contributors during refereeing rounds.
• Reports are posted online (after rapid editorial vetting) on the Submission's Page, and can be replied to (privilege of Authors only) or commented on by all Contributors.
• Anonymity can be preserved at all meaningful stages if desired (as a referee, you can choose to remain anonymous on a particular Report, but named on another).

Contributors thus have additional incentives to actively participate and provide not only high-quality Submissions, but also Reports and Comments of the highest achievable professional caliber. Quality is moreover promoted by Editorial vetting of all Reports, Replies and Comments before public posting.

Yes. All SciPost publications will obtain a unique DOI, enabling citations and metrics as per other journals. Membership of Crossref means that SciPost papers directly benefit from a set of citation metrics.

SciPost Physics is listed in ESCI (part of Web of Science's Core Collection), in Google Scholar and in INSPIRE.

SciPost is an active participant in the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), aiming to make all citation metadata publicly available, thereby opening up a future in which a much more diverse citation metrics landscape will be accessible.

No. SciPost publications or submissions under consideration for publication in SciPost Journals must not be submitted elsewhere.

All SciPost contents are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. Under this license, the copyright remains the property of the authors, who then agree to make their articles available for reuse without permission or fees, for virtually any purpose. Anyone may copy, distribute or reuse these articles as long as the author(s) and original source are properly cited. This is the standard license used worldwide in open access journals. You can read more about the details in the SciPost Journals Terms and Conditions.

Yes. SciPost is here to stay, and authors should not worry that their SciPost publications could potentially disappear. In any case, all our articles are preserved in CLOCKSS, an industry-wide standard professional-level archiving system. As long as the Web exists, our publications will be accessible, even if the Netherlands get flooded.

SciPost Commentaries is a searchable repository of Commentary Pages on scientific publications. Each Commentary Page contains some relevant summary info about the publication (such as Title, Author(s), DOI link to published version, abstract, ...), followed by Comments from Contributors and Author and Contributor Replies.

Any registered Contributor can request the activation of a Commentary Page by filling in the Commentary request page.

SciPost Theses is a searchable repository of external links to Master's, Ph.D. and Habilitation theses. Besides a validated URL pointing to the original document, each Thesis Link page contains some relevant summary info (such as title, author, degree granting institution, abstract, ...), followed by Comments from Contributors and Author and Contributor Replies.

As a registered Contributor, the author of the thesis (or, if unavailable, the supervisor or a colleague) can request the activation of a Thesis Link by filling in the Thesis Link request page.

All categories of contents can be commented on: Publications, Submissions, Commentaries and Thesis Links. In addition, Comments themselves can be replied to.

Only registered Contributors can submit Comments.

Comments posted on SciPost carry an identifier including the Contributor's full name.

Reports on Submissions are anonymous by default. If the Contributor providing the Report wishes it, anonymity can be waived. Though we do not force it, we do encourage our Referees to sign their Reports.

More details can be found in our Privacy Policy.

• SciPost was founded by J.-S. Caux, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Amsterdam.
• The legal entity behind SciPost is Stichting SciPost, a not-for-profit Foundation established in Amsterdam. Its (non-remunerated) personnel consists in Prof. J.-S. Caux (chairman), Dr J. van Mameren (secretary) and Prof. J. van Wezel (treasurer). The portal is run by a team of volunteer officers coordinated by the Foundation.

The publishing landscape is evolving rapidly, and it is not clear that the best interests of science and scientists are being represented. SciPost offers a grassroots solution to the problem of scientific publishing, designed and implemented by scientists in the best interests of science itself.

The initial rollout of SciPost offers a Physics portal.

Portals in other fields will be opened if the SciPost model proves to be successful, and when a sufficient number of sponsors have been signed up.

Yes. All content is vetted by the editorial team before being made public. Only meaningful, professional-level scientific content is accepted. SciPost does not take any responsibility for the actual contents of postings.

SciPost operates non-commercially and purely not-for-profit, incurring minimal costs. Contributors, who are by definition all academically employed, provide all the content and perform all editorial tasks as part of their normal institutional academic duties. Operations are kept running by a team of volunteer officers, themselves academically employed.

The startup phase was supported by a grant from the NWO in the Netherlands. Long-term operations will be financed by donations from national funding agencies, universities, societies, foundations and individuals. More information on our cost-slashing consortial scheme can be found on our sponsors page. You can also take a look at our one-page Prospectus and at our full Sponsorship Agreement template for more information. You might even consider petitioning your local librarian/director/... to consider sponsoring us, which you can easily do using this email template.