EPL: Bart van Tiggelen is the new Editor-in-Chief
Bart van Tiggelen has been appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of EPL, a global letters journal owned and published by a consortium of 17 national physical societies in Europe under the umbrella of the European Physical Society. He started his term in January 2018, taking over from Giorgio Benedek.
After his studies in astrophysics at the Leiden Observatory, Bart van Tiggelen specialised in all forms of wave propagation (acoustic and seismic waves, microwaves). His research covers a wide range of disciplines and has led him to work in computational physics, magneto-optics or quantum electrodynamics. He is currently a research professor at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, and is based in Grenoble.
Bart van Tiggelen is a theoretical and interdisciplinary scientist with a good overview of the needs of EPL as journal covering all fields of physics.
When asked about the challenges of EPL, he says: “EPL would gain in having more visibility, especially among young authors. There is a strong tendency to try and publish in prestigious and expensive commercial journals with a high Impact Factor, but these journals have a huge rejection rate of manuscripts, sometimes without peer review. They believe that such prestige demonstrates their scientific excellence and facilitates awards of grants or access to promotion. My wish is to convince physicists to publish in journals like EPL owned by learned societies, that accept all excellent submissions after peer review. The scientific community benefits from the profits made by the journal and the authors can archive their pre- and post-prints. Ultimately we should converge towards an economic model that allows anybody to have free access to our articles. “ A discussion has started in the EPLA Board of Directors on the transitions to Open Access.
EPL being an interdisciplinary journal, another important task for the editor during his 3-year term is to cover all fields in physics, especially some new disciplines such as artificial intelligence, gravitational waves or quantum technologies. Together with Frédéric Burr, EPL Staff Editor, the new Editor-in-Chief has started to think about the replacement of several co-editors who have reached the ends of their terms: “There is a lot to do!” says Bart van Tiggelen, who began working for EPL in June 2017 to ensure a smooth transition with his predecessor.
