American Journal of Physics®

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Pre-submission information 

Is AJP the right journal? The American Journal of Physics publishes papers that meet the needs and intellectual interests of college and university physics teachers. Please read the Statement of Editorial Policy carefully to ensure that AJP is the right journal for your work. It is not sufficient for your manuscript to be novel and correct; it is also essential that it is broadly interesting and useful to physics instructors.

Read recent AJP articles: If you’re not a regular AJP reader, familiarizing yourself with the style and coverage of articles will greatly increase the chance that your paper will be published. If you don’t have institutional or personal access to AJP, consider becoming an AAPT member. The online journal website contains a few articles that are available without a subscription, so, at a minimum, you should read these.

Do a thorough literature search: Carefully search the physics and astronomy teaching literature, both to ensure that your idea is new and to be certain to cite related work. Wikipedia can be used to find an updated list of physics education journals.

Consider your audience: Present any needed background in your Introduction, rather than assuming that your reader has knowledge beyond the standard undergraduate physics coursework. Streamline and simplify your presentation of new material.

Write carefully: Quality of writing is an important criterion for acceptance at AJP. While the editors and reviewers can make some allowances for errors from non-native English speakers, you should have someone with an excellent command of written English read your manuscript to improve the grammar and usage. Read and follow AJP's manuscript formatting policies. Our sample manuscript pdfsample manuscript files and figure preparation guidelines may also be helpful.

Ethical guidelines and copyright release: Manuscripts are considered for publication under the condition that they represent the original work of the author(s), have been submitted only to AJP, have not been published or accepted for publication elsewhere, and will not be submitted to any other journal while it is under consideration by AJP. Posting manuscripts to authors’ personal Web sites and to e-print servers is allowed, as described in AIP's guidelines. (arXiv's non-exclusive license type is the best option, however, you can also choose the CC-BY-NC-ND license.) Authors are expected to adhere to ethical standards and guidelines detailed on the AIP Publishing's Ethics and Responsibilities page, which also includes information on the use of generative artificial intelligence in writing papers.

Post-submission information

Information on using content from your published paper can be found here.

AJP supports name changes for authors. Information can be found here.

The same document also includes information on correcting errors via errata, publishers’ notes, and retractions.