Meet the new chief editor of APS Open Science, the Society’s newest journal

In science, the studies we celebrate are often those with tidy breakthroughs and positive results. But the quieter stories — the experiments that didn’t behave as expected or the disproven hypotheses — are just as essential to progress.

“Null and negative results are useful and even essential to the scientific process,” says Badreddine Assouar, chief editor of the American Physical Society’s newest journal, APS Open Science.

“That’s what I like so much about this journal,” he adds. “We want the data, the negative results, the methods, the software advances, and all the results that make science reproducible and more efficient.”

An applied physicist involved in several international collaborations at any one time, Assouar understands how valuable open science and open access journals are, especially for early and mid-career researchers. This month, APS News spoke with Assouar to learn more about his career, his hopes for the journal, and what kinds of papers he’s excited to see.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What first drew you into the world of physics?

The very initial spark into physics was that I was very passionate about waves. Wave propagation in general, wave interactions, communications. When I started my bachelor’s degree, I wasn't really thinking about doing research or going deep into the physical sciences. I just enjoyed learning. But then I started taking fundamental physics, nuclear physics, statistical physics, and I started to get excited about doing research.

At that time, all the digital electronics were emerging, like the internet and all these information and digital communication systems. The idea of working with radio frequency communications interested me and triggered me to dive deeper into waves and research.

Then I did my Ph.D. at the University of Lorraine in France on surface acoustic wave physics and engineering. Today, I would call myself an applied physicist, because I’m interested in bridging the gap between fundamental and applied physics.

Now you’re a research professor at the French National Center for Scientific Research. What are you studying these days?

My group conducts research on metamaterials, phononics, and wave physics in a broader sense. We are working a lot on how we can structure, shape, and manipulate the propagation of acoustic waves, mechanical waves, and elastic waves throughout metamaterials, which are a kind of artificial material that provide unique properties and functionalities. We are actually involved in theoretical, numerical, computational and experimental research. We are a very interdisciplinary group.

Interdisciplinarity between physics and other fields, and within physics, is a big topic that we discuss often for this new journal, APS Open Science. We would like it to be quite interdisciplinary.

Your coauthors and projects are highly international. What are your reflections on this as you enter this new role as chief editor?

To me, research, by definition, is international. In my group, we have a lot of collaborations with colleagues in Europe, the U.S., and Asia, specifically China.

With APS Open Science, I think it will be key to do outreach and promote our journal globally through different conferences and events to make it clear that the journal is truly accessible to anyone in any country.

APS Open Science is meant to be an inclusive, welcoming journal. We would like to have submissions from all regions in the world, from researchers at all career stages, especially early and mid-career scientists.

Any other hopes and dreams for the journal as it takes flight?

I have a lot of dreams for the journal. The idea is to support the global open science movement by welcoming high-quality, technically valid, and reproducible research. We will be not only open access, but open science, which means that we will be publishing research outputs from the entire scientific process, not just the final, positive results. This is not very common in the physics community.

Of course, we will welcome more classical research articles that report positive results, but we are also looking for the work that contributes to those final results — the methods, the software, the data, all the other trials, and the negative results. My dream is to have a strong, trusted publishing venue for all the open research regarding physics and physical sciences.

Additionally, we’ve heard from the APS community that they are looking for a faster peer review process. With APS Open Science, we will be working to improve the timing of the process, to provide decisions to authors more quickly, while maintaining a high standard of review.

Why is it valuable to publish results that aren’t groundbreaking or positive?

Null and negative results are obtained when conclusions don't support the initial hypothesis of the paper. If you mixed up your interpretation, missed something in the model, didn't take into account some components or physical parameters or effects in your equations, you may not have gotten the results you expected.

Maybe it’s not what you hoped for, but it is still useful and interesting, because other researchers in the community can use those results to guide their research. Null and negative results are correct. These results are not wrong or invalid. They are technically based on correct data and worthy of publication.

What research trends are you keeping an eye on as submissions start coming in?

We would be excited to welcome papers on computer science and artificial intelligence, and quantum information and science technology papers. There is a global trend for research in those fields. We are also interested in research at the intersection of the life sciences and physics, like biomedicine and biophysics.

What are you doing when you’re not editing or directing research?

The main thing I focus on outside of work is my two little daughters. I enjoy my work as a scientist and editor, but it is important to me to have a balanced life. I have also been doing a lot of running — I run marathons and half-marathons. I try to give myself time to refresh the mind and body, and it is also a good time to think about my research ideas, and the “big pictures” of scientific development and the publishing landscape.