How would you account for the increased citation rate of your journal?

Brane and string theory has seen a resurgence in the past 5 years, leading to an increase in the number of published papers in all journals. Classical and Quantum Gravity has been growing steadily for many years; it has doubled in size since 1994, and regular submissions grew by 14% in 2001. These two factors have increased the number of brane-theory papers in the journal and hence the number of citations. The increase in citations per paper I think is due to a stronger profile and recognition of Classical and Quantum Gravity in this community. We have been fortunate to receive papers from some high-profile researchers and have published two refereed special issues based on the STRINGS'99 conference at the Albert Einstein Institute and the Graduate School on String Theory in Turin in 2000. The latter produced six very high-quality review articles which are being highly downloaded from our website.

  What historical factors have contributed to the success of your journal?

Strict control of the peer-review process, and our status as a learned society journal. In the early 1990s, we tried to improve the overall quality of the journal and asked referees to be tougher in their assessments. I think we have maintained and even improved upon these initiatives, and so readers now know that Classical and Quantum Gravity will give them consistently high-quality research. Equally, our authors know that their papers will appear in good company. The effect of being a journal of the Institute of Physics is hard to gauge, but in some sections of the academic world, and for some parts of the library community, this is an important factor in reading and purchasing decisions

Keeping up-to-date can be difficult. String and brane theory moves very fast and the volume of published material is quite large. Everything appears on the ArXiv preprint server and this is researchers' primary means of communication. Journal publication then serves as a validation of the research, but when things move so fast our referees may find that more recent preprints affect the claims of a paper submitted to the journal. We have to help authors make their papers as up-to-date as possible, citing the most recent preprint and journal articles, without getting into an endless cycle of amendments.

String and brane theory—and quantum gravity—are about as far removed from applied science as one can get. There may well be spin-off applications from other areas of gravitational physics in the future, perhaps in the area computational or experimental techniques. However, brane theory and quantum gravity will not have applications in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, these areas of research do address our most fundamental questions about the nature of space, time, and matter.

Classical and Quantum Gravity
Dr Andrew Wray, Senior Publisher
Institute of Physics, Publisher