News Archive

Brant Ulsh, CHP, PhD, Health Physics Editor in Chief

Big changes are coming! We are happy to announce that as of 1 January 2025, page charges to publish articles in Health Physics and Operational Radiation Safety will be eliminated. Since I took over as editor in chief of the Journal in 2017, page charges (the price authors pay to publish their work in the Journal) have consistently generated the most complaints, and we have been looking for a way to eliminate them for years. Unfortunately, we simply had no alternative way to cover the mailing, paper, printing, and binding costs associated with publishing Health Physics. Until now, that is.

Starting in January 2025, the Journal will be moving to an online-only format, as so many other scientific journals already have. It has been obvious for years that this is the direction the scientific publishing industry is moving, and we would have to make this move eventually. We have endured a competitive disadvantage compared to similar journals who don't assess page charges, and this has contributed to periodic droughts in manuscript submissions. Nonetheless, we serve the members of the Health Physics Society, and we know that some of our readers prefer the hard-copy version of the Journal, so we have moved cautiously.

We finally reached a tipping point in January 2024 when our publisher presented cost projections and showed that we could eliminate page charges if we made the inevitable move to online only. On the other hand, as production costs continue to escalate, the Journal's financial environment would deteriorate if we continued to do things the way we always have with a hard-copy version. It simply became fiscally untenable to continue to delay this inevitable move online.

For those of you who access the Journal electronically already, the change will be seamless. For those of you who prefer the hard copy, we humbly ask for your understanding of the fiscal environment we are facing. We will continue to bring you a high-quality journal, just as we always have.

Find the August 2024 issue of Health Physics here.