Open Calls for Papers

EPJ ST Collection: Fractional Calculus and Time-Delayed Dynamics

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Published on 02 March 2026

Guest Editors: Mattia Coccolo, Miguel A. F. Sanjuán

The study of dynamical systems with memory has advanced rapidly in recent years, largely through two major frameworks: fractional calculus and time-delayed dynamics. Each has developed into a mature discipline with its own theories, methods, and applications, yet they have often evolved in parallel rather than in dialogue.

Fractional derivatives provide a natural framework for hereditary effects and anomalous transport through continuous memory kernels, while time delays capture explicit dependencies on past states arising from finite signal propagation or feedback. Despite their different mathematical formulations, both approaches aim to describe how the past influences the present. Striking parallels have begun to emerge: fractional operators can sometimes be interpreted as infinite-dimensional delay distributions, while time-delayed systems can reproduce long-memory effects in discrete form. This suggests a deeper, underexplored connection between the two perspectives.

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EPJ ST Collection: Research in Physics Education and History of Physics: Focus on Teacher Training and the Teaching of Quantum Mechanics

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Published on 27 January 2026

Guest Editors: Marina Carpineti, Marco Giliberti, Luisa Lovisetti, Marisa Michelini, Salvatore Esposito

Submissions are invited for a Special Issue of EPJ-ST dedicated to “Research in Physics Education and History of Physics: Focus on Teacher Training and the Teaching of Quantum Mechanics”. The issue will include selected contributions presented at the national COOFIS-08 4th meeting on “Research in Physics Education and History of Physics" with a focus on teachers’ formation and on quantum mechanics education that will take place from December 11th to 13th 2025 at the Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy). The conference is a forum for discussion of the Coordination of physics education research in Italy among most of the researchers working in this field.

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EPJ ST Collection: Self-Organization and Higher-Order Interactions in Complex Networks

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Published on 19 January 2026

Guest Editors: Alexander Pisarchik, Jürgen Kurths, Alexander Hramov, Semyon Kurkin, Drozdstoy Stoyanov, Dibakar Ghosh

The science of complex networks has fundamentally reshaped our understanding of interconnected systems across disciplines. Traditionally, network science has relied on pairwise interactions to model system dynamics. However, many real-world systems—from functional brain networks and ecological communities to social systems and collaborative networks—are driven by higher-order interactions (HOIs), where the relationship between elements cannot be decomposed into simple binary links. Concurrently, self-organization, the process where a system's internal interactions lead to the spontaneous emergence of ordered structure and function without external control, is a hallmark of complex adaptive systems. The interplay between self-organization and HOIs is a frontier of modern network science, crucial for developing accurate models of real-world complexity.

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EPJ ST Special Issue: Energy Saving in Physics Research and Applications

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Published on 23 September 2024

Guest Editors: Jürgen Kurths, Holger Kersten, Harinipriya Seshadri, B. Ananthanarayan

Energy saving is one of the most challenging problems and of highest relevance due to the expected impacts on limiting or mitigating global climate change. While there is a lot of research and development going into novel energy saving science and technology, research itself - both fundamental and applied, academic and industrial - can self-examine its own practices, quite independently of the scale of their contribution, to lead the way in setting, fostering and promoting best approaches and practices in energy saving.

This issue in EPJ ST aims thus to collect papers in which the research community, being active in various academic and industrial fields and institutions, reflects on how to contribute itself, from individual up to most general initiatives to energy savings in daily operations and research work, to the global goal of saving energy resources.

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