At the 2013 Annual Meeting of the European Nuclear Medicine Association (EANM) in Lyon, Springer launched a new companion journal to the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (EJNMMI): the EJNMMI Physics journal. EJNMMI Physics will be a partner journal of EJNMMI Research, of which Angelika Bischof Delaloye has been the editor-in-chief since 2011 [1]. The well-versed reader may stop here with a grunting sound: “YAJ!” (“yet another journal”). However, there is more to this announcement.

The development of nuclear medicine is indebted to many contributions from physicists, including the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel, the isolation of radioactive isotopes by Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the discovery of the positron by Carl David Anderson and the discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick, subsequently leading to the discovery of artificial radioactivity by Irène and Frederic Joliot-Curie, who received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935. It is perhaps surprising, therefore, that at present there is no journal dedicated to the field of physics in nuclear medicine, and it is very noticeable that such papers are scattered across a range of journals that either cover general physics in medicine or are more focussed on clinical issues. With the increasing emphasis on molecular imaging and personalised medicine, physics can only become more central to future developments, and a platform is needed to focus such ideas.

EJNMMI Physics will fill that gap by providing a publication platform for the exchange of scientifically sound information on physics and physics matters in the realm of nuclear medicine. In recognition of today’s multi-disciplinary approach to nuclear medicine and nuclear medicine physics, the journal will publish original materials and studies with a focus on applied physics, mathematics and multi-modality imaging instrumentation as well as imaging system engineering and prototyping in nuclear medicine. This includes physics-driven approaches or algorithms supported by physics that foster early clinical adoption of nuclear medicine imaging and therapy regimens.

The journal is open for a variety of contributions, ranging from original articles and short communications to, for example, artefact reports that will describe both a methodological problem leading to a visual or quantitative distortion of nuclear medicine imaging and a solution to the problem. In addition, opinion papers, pictorial assays and review articles addressing controversies and timely developments will be published, relevant to both nuclear medicine physics and instrumentation. One section, “Young Investigator Reports”, will provide young medical physicists with a submission category suitable for summary reports of their research activities as part of their thesis work. This journal is not intended to replace the EJNMMI as the publication of choice for physics-related articles that are of interest to the wider clinically minded community, but will serve to support research before translation to the clinical setting and to draw attention to the more fundamental aspects of physics in nuclear medicine that may otherwise be published in more general journals.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed using standard criteria of scientific austerity and quality equivalent to those of the EJNMMI and similar journals. The editorial board of EJNMMI Physics has been selected in anticipation of a range of submitted topics including radioisotopes, detector physics, quantification, image co-registration, modelling and reconstruction, hybrid imaging, dosimetry, radiobiology, radiation protection and further applications of medical physics.

EJNMMI Physics will be published open access (OA) as a SpringerOpen journal. Detailed information about SpringerOpen journals is available at http://www.springeropen.com/. After the first articles have been published, the journal will be included in PubMed Central. Of course EJNMMI Physics aims at citations and at receiving an impact factor (IF) as soon as possible. Thus, this journal is in line with the partner journal, EJNMMI Research [1].

Open access, while still a new concept, is becoming increasingly accepted and continues to grow, mainly with the mind-boggling speed of the spread of the internet and cordless reading devices. A recent study by Björk and Salomon found that OA journals that fund publishing with an article-processing charge (APC) are on average cited more often than other OA journals [2]. The journal also offers a reduced APC, or even publication for free, if one of the authors is affiliated with an institution that has joined the SpringerOpen membership program, which currently has over 450 members. Further details can be found at http://www.springeropen.com/libraries. Likewise, an increasing number of research-minded organisations have set aside funds dedicated to covering APCs for their researchers. This includes organisations such as the UK Research Council, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the European Cooperation in Science and technology (COST), to name but a few.

EJNMMI Physics was launched at the Annual Meeting of the EANM. This was no random choice. In line with Ignasi Carrio’s editorial “EJNMMI: the European way of communicating science” [3], this new journal will be able to resonate the vibrancy and productivity of the applied medical physics community in Europe and thus contribute to strengthening the European nuclear medicine physics community. It is, therefore, only logical to announce that the EANM Physics and Dosimetry Committees will consider an award for the best paper published in the category Young Investigator Report in EJNMMI Physics. This type of award would be a clear testimony to the multidisciplinary nature of nuclear medicine physics. In that regard, we look forward to receiving numerous contributions to this new journal, which, we believe, will help us grow stronger together.

We would like to thank Ute Heilmann and Sabine Ben Ghechir of Springer for their tremendous work in setting up this new journal. We will do our best to utilise the editorial tools in efficient and timely fashion, attend to every submission with utmost scientific scrutiny and will maintain high quality in the review process. And now, access is open to a new open access companion of physics in nuclear medicine: http://www.springer.com/medicine/nuclear+medicine/journal/40658.