Intro 50 years anniversary of Applied Physics

After Helmut Lotsch, and after the division of Applied Physics into Appl. Phys. A (APA) and Appl. Phys. B (APB), Michael Stuke took over APA as Editor-in-Chief. He served in this role until end of 2016 and developed APA into a wellrecognized journal in the field: the number of publications increased steadily from around 250 papers per year in 1996 until about an average 750 when he left. Also, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics and the Julius Springer Forum in Applied Physics were created in this period. In December 2016, Michael Stuke stepped down, and Thomas Lippert took over the role as Editor-in-Chief of APA in January 2017, with the goal of keeping the high standards of APA, but also to try to increase the impact factor and to slowly “modernize” the journal. There were a number of measures and changes which took place, during the first years, i.e.

After Helmut Lotsch, and after the division of Applied Physics into Appl. Phys. A (APA) and Appl. Phys. B (APB), Michael Stuke took over APA as Editor-in-Chief. He served in this role until end of 2016 and developed APA into a wellrecognized journal in the field: the number of publications increased steadily from around 250 papers per year in 1996 until about an average 750 when he left. Also, the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics and the Julius Springer Forum in Applied Physics were created in this period.
In December 2016, Michael Stuke stepped down, and Thomas Lippert took over the role as Editor-in-Chief of APA in January 2017, with the goal of keeping the high standards of APA, but also to try to increase the impact factor and to slowly "modernize" the journal.
There were a number of measures and changes which took place, during the first years, i.e.
• A number of editors stepped down together when M.
Stuke retired • We replaced them and even increased the number of editors, according to the topics we defined for the journal, also with the goal to have for each topic at least one expert editor • Topics and key words were defined in more detail, and certain topics were not any more present. Our current topics cover: which now have the role of a first quality/topic check, and then assigning the papers to the corresponding editors • plagiarism checking was introduced as standard approach for each submitted paper, and other integrity measures, e.g. to limit the number of self-citations or reviewers insisting on own papers to be cited. • the editor pick was established, with certain papers highlighted for the journal • a new appearance was introduced for APA and APB, now having a cover image for each issue • increased presence of the journal in social media with support from the Springer Physics platforms • Highlight journal metrics in 2021: more than 3600 submissions, with an acceptance rate of 26%; a median 18 days until the first decision; almost 818,000 downloads. • the sum of these measures may have contributed to a steady increase of our Impact Factor, which more than doubled in 5 years, reaching 2.983 in 2021 (as compared to 1.455 in 2016) Of course, we faced also challenges, e.g. the increased number of misconduct and research integrity cases (sometimes needing support from the Springer Research Integrity Team), the increasing problems to find two or more available reviewers, but we are working on this to have all these issues resolved. Our main goal is to keep high standards for the journal (e.g. high quality articles and fast turn-around time) to ensure that the journal will thrive for many more years.
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the journal, we have put this special issue together, where we collected papers from: • recipients of the Julius Springer Prize in Applied Physics • authors of our most cited papers • former editors/senior editors • present editors/senior editors • authors invited by our editors.
We hope that we managed to put an interesting special issue together with a mixture of reviews and original articles, that highlight the broad selection of topics of Applied Physics A.
Finally, Thomas would like to thank the people at Springer, which take care of the journal behind the scenes, and of course mainly the editors present and past, without them the journal would not be there where it is.
Thomas Lippert. Editor-in-Chief of Applied Physics A.