Pushing the Frontiers: On the Tenth Anniversary of Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics

This year, in 2023, the journal Progress of Theoretical and Experimental Physics (PTEP) celebrates its tenth anniversary. PTEP is a monthly, online only, and fully open access international journal published by the Physical Society of Japan. It covers articles on both theoretical and experimental physics, and has made remarkable progress over the years with the publication of new discoveries in particle physics, nuclear physics, cosmology, and condensed matter physics. For publications in high energy physics, the article processing charge (APC) is exempted, being supported by an international consortium, SCOAP³ (or The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics).

PTEP publishes more than 170 papers and letters in a year. The average time from submission to acceptance is 70 days and the median time is 57 days. PTEP has about 120 editors, approximately 20% of whom are from outside Japan. PTEP articles are downloaded over 21,000 times every month across more than 100 countries.

For the last 10 years, PTEP has been publishing high-quality papers, earning itself an impact factor of 7.492 in 2021. PTEP is a successor to the prestigious journal Progress of Theoretical Physics (PTP), established in 1946 by the first Japanese Nobel Laureate physicist Hideki Yukawa. PTP published two Nobel Prize-winning papers, namely Sin-Itiro Tomonaga’s seminal work on the renormalization of quantum electrodynamics and the paper by Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa that predicted the presence of six flavors of quarks. In 2013, PTP was discontinued and merged into PTEP, expanding its scope to include cutting-edge research in experimental physics.

Some of the notable publications of PTEP include the Review of Particle Physics articles in 2020 and 2022, which serve as an encyclopedia for researchers in high energy physics.

PTEP also publishes Special Sections regularly. A noteworthy publication on this front were the three Special Sections dedicated to Professor Yoichiro Nambu, a highly influential particle physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2008 for the discovery of the spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism. Additionally, PTEP dedicated two Special Sections to honor the legacy of Professor Masatoshi Koshiba, who won the Nobel Prize in 2002 for the detection of astrophysical neutrinos.

PTEP also publishes Invited Papers on studies with significant impact, such as that on the planned launch of the LiteBIRD satellite for mapping the polarization of the cosmic background radiation. Additionally, publications such as the Belle II physics book, which summarizes the target of the super-B factory experiment, highlight the high standards of PTEP publication, and the large number of citations it garners as a result. Accordingly, nine highly-cited PTEP papers have received the annual Outstanding Paper award of the Physical Society of Japan.

On this anniversary, PTEP celebrates its history of pushing the frontiers of theoretical and experimental physics by making top-quality research papers accessible to everyone.

Visit the PTEP webpage, read the papers, follow PTEP on Twitter, and submit your paper to PTEP today !