[This message is cross-posted.  Please pardon the duplication.]

AIP and APS Institute Sweeping Changes to Form and Function of Virtual Journals
Series

MELVILLE, NY, 11 March 2009 - The American Institute of Physics and the
American Physical Society, co-publishers of the Virtual Journals in Science and
Technology (VJ) series, today announced the release of a completely redesigned
website for the Virtual Journals. The series currently covers five areas of
burgeoning research: Biological Physics Research, Nanoscale Science &
Technology, Quantum Information, Ultrafast Science, and Applications of
Superconductivity.

The AIP/APS Virtual Journals are free topical alerting services that collect
and organize papers from a broad range of sources, including Science and Nature.
They allow researchers to stay current with the best and most recently published
literature in the field, and users may sign up for timely Table of Contents
email alerts. Each indexed article is linked to the full text at the
contributing publisher's site and is free to view by users at any subscribing
institution.

"We've dedicated a good deal of time and resources to redesigning the VJ site,
as we didn't want to make changes that were simply cosmetic," said Mark Cassar,
AIP Acting Publisher, Journals and Technical Publications. "On visiting the site
now, you will immediately notice a refreshed and updated look, but significant
changes to the overall functionality of the journals will also become abundantly
apparent as you drill down."

The Virtual Journals are hosted on AIP's Scitation online platform and benefit
greatly from the 2008 redesign of article abstract pages. That redesign
introduced a number of features that offer users enhanced interactivity with
journal content, and greater latitude in utilizing the information provided.

A tabbed environment has improved readability and navigation throughout the VJ
site, and provides easy access to lists of linked references and citing
articles. Navigation to higher levels of the journals now appear as "breadcrumb"
links in the upper left of each abstract. Citation downloads, including DOIs, to
standard bibliographic formats are also available for Scitation-hosted source
journals.

In addition, the focus of each individual VJ is now on the content of the
current issue, with this content displayed on the VJ's homepage. Additional
space is also dedicated to news items, which will allow readers to access a
greater number of older news items, which until now have been removed after a
brief time period.

American Institute of Physics is a not-for-profit corporation chartered in 1931
to provide publishing and distribution services for scientific and technical
societies. AIP is the publisher or co-publisher of 12 journals, many of which
have the highest impact factors in their category, as well as two magazines and
the AIP Conference Proceedings series.  AIP's online publishing platform,
Scitation, currently hosts more than 1,600,000 articles from 185 publications of
30 scholarly publishers.

American Physical Society is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the
advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics. APS represents more than
46,000 physicists worldwide and is a leader in the creation of e-journals. It
publishes leading international physics journals, including Physical Review
Letters, Reviews of Modern Physics, Physical Review A - E, Physical Review
Special Topics, and Physics - a new, free, online publication spotlighting
exceptional research. APS also organizes major scientific meetings and provides
strong outreach programs, including education and both international and public
affairs.


For additional information, visit http://www.virtualjournals.org or contact:

Mark Cassar
Acting Publisher, Journals and Technical Publications
American Institute of Physics
Email: [log in to unmask] 

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