Research on Publishing Problems in Physics

FOLLOWING the lull in the publishing of research results that occurred during World War II it was commonly accepted among physicists that there would have to be some temporary increase in the sizes of physics journals so that declassifiable wartime results might be included in the open literature. The fact that in 1949 the archive journals published by the American Institute of Physics contained twice as many pages as they did in 1945 was considered neither surprising nor alarming, although it had been found advisable in 1949 to effect changes in type face, line spacing, and margin width to make room for more material per journal page. Publishing costs were rising. Printing and other production bottlenecks were commencing to be troublesome. The rapid growth in the number and output of physicists working in freshly developed areas of research suggested that steps would soon have to be taken to satisfy their special publishing needs.