AIP and APS Institute Sweeping Changes to Form and Function of Virtual Journals Series

MELVILLE, NY, 11 February 2009 — The American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society , co-publishers of the Virtual Journals in Science and Technology (VJ) series, today announced the release of a completely redesigned website for the Virtual Journals. The series currently covers five areas of burgeoning research: Biological Physics Research, Nanoscale Science & Technology, Quantum Information, Ultrafast Science, and Applications of Superconductivity.

The AIP/APS Virtual Journals are free topical alerting services that collect and organize papers from a broad range of sources, including Science and Nature. They allow researchers to stay current with the best and most recently published literature in the field, and users may sign up for timely Table of Contents email alerts. Each indexed article is linked to the full text at the contributing publisher’s site and is free to view by users at any subscribing institution.

“We’ve dedicated a good deal of time and resources to redesigning the VJ site, as we didn’t want to make changes that were simply cosmetic,” said Mark Cassar, AIP Acting Publisher, Journals and Technical Publications. “On visiting the site now, you will immediately notice a refreshed and updated look, but significant changes to the overall functionality of the journals will also become abundantly apparent as you drill down.”

The Virtual Journals are hosted on AIP’s Scitation online platform and benefit greatly from the 2008 redesign of article abstract pages. That redesign introduced a number of features that offer users enhanced interactivity with journal content, and greater latitude in utilizing the information provided.

A tabbed environment has improved readability and navigation throughout the VJ site, and provides easy access to lists of linked references and citing articles. Navigation to higher levels of the journals now appear as “breadcrumb” links in the upper left of each abstract. Citation downloads, including DOIs, to standard bibliographic formats are also available for Scitation-hosted source journals.

In addition, the focus of each individual VJ is now on the content of the current issue, with this content displayed on the VJ’s homepage. Additional space is also dedicated to news items, which will allow readers to access a greater number of older news items, which until now have been removed after a brief time period.