The BESIII Collaboration officially released a draft version of its White Paper on the Future Physics Programme of BESIII ("white paper") at arXiv.org on Dec. 13. Feedback on the paper from international peers will be collected for two weeks. The release of the white paper signifies a new stage for BESIII physics research and China’s experimental hadron physics research.

The white paper presents a detailed survey of important topics in tau-charm physics and hadron physics that BESIII expects to explore over BEPCII's remaining operating life. 

The survey will aid optimization of BESIII's data-taking plan over the next few years and provide a physics-based rationale for the possible upgrade of BEPCII to higher luminosity.

The Collaboration initiated the white paper in 2017 in order to analyze the current research status and future plans for the physics program. The white paper includes information for five working groups, including the light hadron physics, charmonium physics, tau and QCD-related research, and charm physics and new physics groups. The white paper also discusses the status and upgrade plans for BEPCII accelerators and BESIII detectors.

From Sept. 2 to 4, the International Review Committee of the white paper, comprising eight experts from China, Israel, Italy, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and the U.K., reviewed the first draft. On Nov. 14, the committee submitted a formal report, giving high marks to the BESIII experiment’s achievements and white paper. The committee also put forward specific comments and suggestions for modifying the white paper. 

The white paper will be submitted to Chinese Physics C for official publication after it is finalized.