Quality Control

A recently held advanced workshop on Energy Transport in Low-Dimensional Systems attracted many big names in the field of condensed matter physics to ICTP. Laurens Molenkamp, the current editor of Physical Review B, one of the most prestigious journals in the field, was among them. Molenkamp is an experimental condensed matter physicist and the chair of experimental physics at the University of Würzburg, Germany.

Molenkamp's editorialship began in March 2012, and in the short time since then he has identified editorial objectives, a crucial one being to tighten the scope of the journal.

"The number of submissions is constantly increasing--it is now close 10,000 submissions every year--and this puts a lot of pressure on the reviewers and editors. And so, to maintain quality, it is important to focus on accepting papers that fall within the scope of the journal, and Physical Review B is primarily a condensed matter physics journal," he says.

"This [focus] will ensure that Physical Review B remains a quality publication," explains Molenkamp. He points out that this approach could mean that more papers are turned down at the editorial level. He reiterates his statement published in the Physical Review B letter, and says that he is looking to ensure that all the topics within the journal's scope are represented and at the same time he is looking to strengthen connections with the research community.

At the workshop, Molenkamp, who has worked extensively on quantum transport and topological insulators, gave a talk titled "Thermoelectric properties of semiconductor nanostructures."