Celebrating in Moscow

By Hamish Johnston

Last week several of my colleagues were in Moscow to celebrate the 10th anniversary of IOP Publishing’s office in that city. A reception was held at the office in the P N Lebedev Institute and speeches given – including one by Jerry Cowhig, the former managing director of IOP Publishing (which publishes physicsworld.com) who had been a driving force in the firm’s Russian campaign.

The company’s first office in Russia (then still in the USSR) opened in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) in 1990. In his speech Jerry summed up the goal of the offices: “[To] bring western research into Russia…[and to] bring Russian research into the West.”

Another highlight of the event was an award for the outstanding paper published in 2010 by a Russian author in an IOP journal. The award was scooped by Nataliya Chistyakova and her co-authors from Moscow State University for their paper “Mössbauer study of isomorphous substitutions in Cu₂Fe_1-xCu_xSnS₄ and Cu₂Fe_1-xZn_xSnS₄ series” published in Journal of Physics: Conference Series.

As well as encouraging Russian physicists to publish in its own journals, IOP Publishing produces English versions of six Russian journals in partnership with the Russian publisher Turpion. These include two physics titles – Quantum Electronics and Physics-Uspekhi – with the other four covering mathematics and chemistry.