Editorial: phys. stat. sol. (a) 206/1
Authors: Stutzmann Martin 
Published: January 2009

Internet‐based publishing and bibliography is one of the many tools enabled by our information age which undoubtedly has a large effect on how science is done today compared to say twenty years ago. The immediate availability of scientific articles from your computer desktop is very convenient if you happen to be an experienced scientist, knowledgeable in your field and knowing whom of your colleagues in this particular field you can trust, and whom not. On the other hand, if you are just a beginner in the field, the shear amount of relevant articles generated by any literature search will leave you overwhelmed and more or less helpless. Obviously, you could rely on the first twenty articles returned by your search, but this certainly will not be an optimum way to begin your career as a scientist in unknown territories. So, in addition, you will probably have a look at the Impact Factor of the journals in your query return, or you even will dig deeper and check the “Hirsch” factor of the author who appeared prominently in your search result or who is on the list of potential new colleagues for an opening in your faculty.

Of course, we all know that this way of evaluating the trustworthiness of scientific results and/or the credibility and scientific standing of a given colleague is dangerous and prone to flaws, but still we use it and we are, to a certain extent, influenced by the results of such bibliographical analyses in our day‐to‐day decisions. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that we also know the data base on which our decisions are made. For example, open access manuscript depositories usually do not implement a strict peer review to screen the scientific quality of the submissions, thus leaving their customers with the difficult, if not impossible decision whom to trust and whom not. In contrast, many high impact journals have adopted a policy to filter the submitted manuscripts by their editorial staff prior to sending the selected submissions out for peer review. In this way, most of the submissions are rejected prior to peer review based on the personal decision of a non‐expert (in most cases), with the widely visible consequence that flashy, spectacular contributions from known players in a field almost always win over submissions which have not been streamlined graphically and geographically.

As the Editor‐in‐Chief of physica status solidi during the last 15 years, I have always tried to counteract such developments of streamlined publication as much as possible. Thus, as a general rule, all manuscripts submitted to physica status solidi are reviewed by two independent referees. Less than 10% of the submitted papers are rejected without peer review, mainly due to a wrong topic or severe formal deficiencies. As shown by the above graphs, about 3000 submissions reach the Editorial Office in Berlin every year. Following peer review and revision, only about 30% of the submitted manuscripts eventually are accepted for publication in the different sections of physica status solidi. The worldwide visibility of physica status solidi has increased strongly to about 500000 full‐text downloads in 2008. This, in turn, is also reflected by the steady increase of the journal Impact Factor, in particular for our Rapid Research Letter section, which has seen a very positive development, mainly because of the rapid publication of important results in the field of solid state physics, which is currently without competition worldwide.

On behalf of the entire Editorial Office of physica status solidi I wish all our authors, referees, and readers all the best for the coming year 2009! Thank you very much for your genuine interest in the progress of science rather than the progress of vanity (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)