  The empirical distribution function of citations to journal articles (EDF for
short) can become the fundamental tool for analyzing the scientific journals.
Endeavors at making bibliometric analysis independent of the intuition of
average citation levels have led us to the study of qualitative properties of
physics journals in the functional space of EDFs. We show that the structure of
this space establishes the connections and relationships that determine the
essential features of physics journals. The research provides an analysis of
240 physics journals indexed in Journal Citation Reports 2015. The relevance of
EDFs clustering is discussed. Our findings reveal four-cluster space of physics
journals. The space brings to light the essential distinctions between physics
journals and shows different level of influence of scientific publishers
belonging to different types (professional physics societies, transnational and
local publishers). The study of EDFs grouped by publishers reveals two binary
oppositions that structure relations between them: "global\,--- local"
publishers and "high cited\,--- low cited" publishers.
