We are happy to welcome our new editor Hugh Hudson from the University of California, Berkeley, to the editorial board of Living Reviews in Solar Physics!

Dr. Hugh Hudson is a senior research scientist at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory with extensive experience in solar X-ray observations and solar irradiance variability in particular. In addition to his ongoing research in CMEs, he is involved with RHESSI data analysis, keeping a special eye on the question of coronal and solar-wind field connectivity as characterized by high-energy particles.

Articles and other publications referencing our journal project have been compiled on the new page Media Coverage, available from the left navigation bar. Readers can follow the acknowledgement and impact of the Living Reviews idea over the last 14 years, embedded in the ongoing discussion on new models of scholarly communication.

All press releases issued by the project are available from this page as well.

MPG Open Access Journal ranks best in its category

The open access physics journal Living Reviews in Relativity, published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, leads the category Physics, Particles & Fields in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters on June 29, 2011. The unique review journal received an impact factor of 12.625, thus improving last year’s performance and rising to #95 in JCR’s complete list of almost 8000 indexed journals.

In March 2011, Living Reviews in Relativity has published its 100th review article in the field of relativity and gravitational physics. The journal currently maintains 72 articles on various topics, which are regularly updated by their authors to incorporate the latest developments and research findings.

Living Reviews‘ successful concept was adopted by other publications in other fields ranging from astronomy to political science. To date, five Living Reviews journals are published by partners from the Max Planck Society, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and ECSA, the Leibniz Association, and the ETH and University of Zurich.

The second journal of the family, Living Reviews in Solar Physics, was just included in Thomson Reuters‘ JCR and SCI in April 2011, therefore missing the deadline for the 2010 Journal Citation Reports by only a few days. However, it would have had received an impressive first impact factor of about 11, ranking 4th in the category Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Although controversial, the Journal Impact Factor is one of the most widely used tools for assessing scientific journals. It allows users to evaluate a journal’s performance and its influence on research. The impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations to those papers that were published during the two preceding years.

Living Reviews in Solar Physics has been accepted for coverage in Thomson Reuters’ Science Citation Index (SCI), beginning with volume 5 (2008). The journal will be indexed and abstracted in SCI, JCR and Current Contents. Living Reviews in Solar Physics, an open access review journal published by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, is thus eligible for the Journal Impact Factor, which is seen to be a widely accepted indicator of a journal’s significance within its field.

P.S.: http://science.thomsonreuters.com/forum/2011/201106/journallist/

With todays new review article on “Varying Constants, Gravitation and Cosmology” by Jean-Philippe Uzan, Living Reviews in Relativity offers 100 review articles on 72 different topics in in various areas of relativity. All full texts are free of charge, following the principles of the Open Access to Scientific Knowledge movement. The journal’s reference database now contains about 20,000 references which are linked to the reviews and can be exported in various formats.

The success of Living Reviews in Relativity has been acknowledged by its high Impact Factor (10.600), and just recently by SPIRES including 10 reviews in the Top Cited Articles during 2010 in gr-qc. Overall, nine articles made it to the list of the 100 most highly cited papers of all time.

We’d like to thank all our readers and authors for their interest and support!

The Living Reviews team.

10 articles from Living Reviews in Relativity are included in SPIRES’ Top Cited Articles during 2010 in gr-qc, listing the 100 most highly cited papers during 2010 in the gr-qc e-print arXiv. Overall, nine articles made it to the list of the 100 most highly cited papers of all time.

The review of “f(R) Theories” by Antonio De Felice and Shinji Tsujikawa came in fourth with already more than 100 citations by December 2010.

Living Reviews is a green publisher, i.e. allows self-archiving of pre- and postprints, which also improves the visibility of our articles online.

In der Rubrik Thema des Monats stellt das Büro für Öffentlichkeitsarbeit regelmäßig aktuelle Forschung an der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW) rund um ein Schwerpunktthema vor. Das Thema des Monats November 2010 ist Europäisierung. Ein Beitrag stellt die innovative Fachzeitschrift “Living Reviews in European Governance” vor:

Die Forschung zur europäischen Integration gehört zu den sich derzeit rasant entwickelnden Wissenschaftsfeldern. Mit den “Living Reviews in European Governance” gibt das EIF eine in den Sozialwissenschaften bahnbrechende Fachzeitschrift heraus, die dieser Entwicklung gerecht werden soll.

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We are happy to welcome our new editor Mukund Rangamani from Durham University to the editorial board of Living Reviews in Relativity!  He is taking over the responsibilities for the field of  “String Theory and Gravitation” from Don Marolf, who will continue to be a member of the board.

High Impact Factor for MPG Open Access Journal

Living Reviews in Relativity second best in its category

The open access physics journal Living Reviews in Relativity, published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, has received its first impact factor of 10.600 in the 2009 Journal Citation Reports released by Thomson Reuters on June 17, 2010. The unique review journal ranks second in the category Physics, Particles & Fields.

Living Reviews were initiated by Max Planck director Bernard Schutz in 1998. The concept of ‘living’ articles is taking advantage of web-based electronic publishing, allowing authors to frequently incorporate the latest developments and research findings by updating their reviews. To ensure high-quality scientific content, all articles are subject to peer review and solicited by an international editorial board from experts in their fields.

Today, Living Reviews in Relativity maintains 68 topical reviews, which have been cited more than 4,800 times by other authors. The journal has become one of the first places scientists look for information about work in the fields of gravitational physics.  Its successful concept was adopted by other publications in various fields ranging from astronomy to political science. Currently, five Living Reviews journals are published by partners from the Max Planck Society, the Austrian Academy of Sciences and ECSA, the Leibniz Association, and the ETH  and the University of Zurich.

The Journal Impact Factor is one of the most widely used tools for assessing scientific journals. It allows users to objectively evaluate a journal’s performance and its influence on research globally. The impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations to those papers that were published during the two preceding years.

Pressemitteilung als PDF [157 KB]

Press Release as PDF [131 KB]

Living Reviews‘ ePublishing Toolkit integrates smoothly into Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.  Successful testing of our open source publication software suite on the new Linux distribution turned out as the easiest installation ever.

The standard setup already provides easy integration of main components used by our pubBuilder module, TeX4Ht and TeX Live are available via apt-get, as are all other additional python packages (see Installation on Ubuntu 10.04).  A recent update of our  software to Python 2.6 made this possible and thus enhanced usability.

The ePubTk is a software package providing tools to help in publishing scientific content on the web.  Its main task is the management of a family of online journals such as Living Reviews, and the conversion of LaTeX based articles in various formats (HTML, PDF) and enrichment by standardized metadata and electronic features.