Publications

The following table gives the number of publications per year, for each of our Journals.

The simple observations we can make are:

• SciPost Physics has maintained its growth rate of about a quarter per year.

• Following up on last year's VGM and as a result of the explosion in 2022, SP Phys Proc has been strongly suppressed (the vast majority of papers published in 2023 were actually submitted in 2022).

• The initial forays we effectuated in further disciplines have been deprioritized, but this is something which we want to reactivate in 2024.

Submissions

We can build a similar table for the number of submission streams (i.e. not counting resubmissions) targeting each Journal:

The total number of Submissions has thus decreased, but this is mostly due to our planned suppression of Proceedings from the previous year's overheating.

Statistics and Metrics

More detailed statistics than those have now been made visible on each Journal's detail page. For example, to get info on SciPost Physics, you can follow the Journals link in the navbar, click on SciPost Physics (namely: scipost.org/SciPostPhys) and then on the About navbar item. You will see a little box with simple metrics, but you can also follow the view detailed metrics link (namely: scipost.org/SciPostPhys/metrics) where you will find more detailed graphs, and have the ability to filter by each Specialty covered by the Journal. All our Journals have this metrics page active, and the data is automatically kept updated.

Submission processing timescales

Despite progress as compared to last year, we are still experiencing a lot of unnecessary delays in editorial processing of submitted manuscripts (you can see some basic indications at our Submissions monitor).

Last year, the three main bottlenecks were

1. assignment of submissions

2. voting on recommendations

3. publishing step once proofs are accepted.

Point 3 and (partially) 2 were addressed by the new staff hires mid-2023, and the backlog has been worked through. Points 1 and 2 are being addressed by providing better and tighter administrative support for Fellows, and by renewing/reinvigorating each College's Fellowship.

Expenditures, Income and Balance

An itemized table summarizing our expenditures looks like this:

This compares to €266k for 2022 and €220k for 2021. The bulk of the increase is due to increased personnel costs, which went from €250k in 2022 to €313k in 2023.

Our total income was €295974.59. Our financial balance for 2023 thus takes the form:

Our expenditures over 2023 thus exceeded our income by about 9%.

APEX

Our business model defines an APEX (average publication expenditure) by spreading our yearly expenditures on to the publishing output. You can find detailed breakdowns on our APEX page .

For 2023, we ascribe €495 expenditures per paper for SciPost Physics (Lecture Notes are rated 50% higher at €742, while Proceedings are rated at half, €247). Though this is a slight increase as compared to 2022 (€444), we are pleased that this once again shows our unit costs stabilizing somewhere in the region of €500.

Sponsorships

Our total income in sponsorships and grants for 2023 was €259975. We are extremely thankful to all organizations which have supported our activities. You can find the full listing of our incoming resources at our finances / subsidies page .

In the immediate future, we remain mostly reliant on (more) small-scale sustained individual institution sponsorships. Our growth remains stunted by the overall failure of academic organizations and funding agencies to install proper sustainable funding structures for initiatives such as ours.

Other grants

We applied for a new grant from the FNSO for two years starting January 2024. This application was successful: we applied for €80k but were given €60k due to budget limitations. This project will thus fund the publication of approximately 120 papers by French-affiliated authors during the coming two years. We were very happy with the setup and the whole evaluation procedure, run very professionally by the FNSO, which we view as a very effective supporter of development of Open Science.

We made an attempt to obtain funding from the NWO through their Open Science Fund. Our project was for the installation of SciPost Physics Datasets (as part of our long-term development plans, this being the natural next step after the launch of SciPost Physics Codebases). This application was not successful. We are now looking for an alternate supporting organization instead of NWO to help support the launch of this system.

Financial balance and resources

Our balance as of 2023-12-31 was of €119700 in our current accounts (not counting about €5k in our PayPal account).

Prognosis

The 9% overshoot of our expenditures compared to our income led to a slight team reorganization at the end of the year, reducing the team by one member. The current account balance is enough to cover our operations for a period of three months. Compared to earlier years, the "red line" is closer (3 months instead of the 6 to 12 we managed over the last few years). This is a serious problem, and in order to stay afloat in 2024, renewed effort will have to be spent on gathering sponsorships.