Transition of MS to an interactive journal and introduction of per-paper APCs

4 August 2026

It is our pleasure to announce the transition of the journal Mechanical Sciences (MS) from an open-access journal with a traditional review process into an interactive open-access journal applying the public peer-review and interactive public discussion concept.

Since its launch in 2010, MS followed the traditional single stage publication process. From 1 September 2026 on, all new submissions will undergo a two-stage publication process with the publication of an access-reviewed preprint as the first stage (MS Discussions) and a final-revised journal article publication in MS as the second stage. Only papers that successfully pass the open discussion involving publicly accessible reviewer comments will finally be published in MS. For further information please see: http://publications.copernicus.org/services/public_peer_review.html

The concept of public peer-review was established in 2001 and is applied for most of the journals published by Copernicus Publications. It is designed to foster scientific discussion and to enhance the scientific quality assurance through increased transparency.

For the transition process we will have to put the MS review system offline on Monday, 31 August 2026 as well as on Tuesday, 1 September 2026. During these two days, no review activities and no new submissions will be possible. We will reactivate the review system on Tuesday, 1 September 2026. The manuscript submission, however, will remain deactivated until Wednesday, 2 September 2026.

Manuscripts that are already in review will be finished in the traditional way.

MS also introduces a new scheme for article processing charges (APCs) for any manuscript submitted from 1 September 2026. Instead of calculating the APCs based on the number of pages, MS will charge a fixed rate per published articled.