We recognize that the ongoing U.S. government shutdown is affecting many in the scientific community, including authors and reviewers of the Physical Review journals, by delaying projects, disrupting funding, and creating uncertainty.
7 October, 2025
Three APS members have received the prize for experiments with a handheld system that revealed quantum physics in action.
15 July, 2025
High rankings demonstrate the impact, reach, and influence of the American Physical Society’s journals.
25 June, 2025
The ‘About’ pages for each APS journal have recently been updated with new data from the 2024 Journal Citation Reports (2025, Clarivate), CiteScore (Scopus Elsevier) and SCImago Journal Rank (SCImago). View the metrics of the entire library on the Journal Metrics page.
The American Physical Society proudly announces the launch of The Physics Archive, a comprehensive digital library that covers 120 years of groundbreaking research from the world-renowned Physical Review journals.
22 April, 2025
The American Physical Society has received the leading score among publishers participating in the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) in the first evaluation of open science practices in scholarly publishing. With high marks in elements like accessibility, data availability, and article metadata, the Society earned a total score of 20.18 out of 25 — almost double that of the next highest scorer.
APS has selected 160 Outstanding Referees for 2025 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
We are excited to announce updates to our journals platform, offering enhanced accessibility features designed to provide a more inclusive experience.
The Physical Review journals would like to congratulate John J. Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton of the University of Toronto for sharing the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize was awarded for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”
1 August, 2024
The policy requires authors to explain where research data can be found starting Sept. 4.
Clarivate Analytics has released the 2023 Journal Citation Reports, which provides journal impact factors and rankings for over 11,000 scholarly journals.
When determining the authorship list for your next paper, be generous yet disciplined.
We are pleased to announce that Sarma Kancharla will assume the position of Chief Editor at PRB, effective April 29, 2024.
11 April, 2024
Physical Review B is proud to announce the creation of an Early Career Researcher Advisory Board (ECAB).
APS has selected 156 Outstanding Referees for 2024 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
Offer includes Journal Access and waived article publication charges to Scientists in 100+ Lower and Middle Income Countries
APS congratulates the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”
APS Editor in Chief, Randall D. Kamien, discusses the importance and impact of journal reviewers.
It is our pleasure to introduce the first published articles from PRX Life, the American Physical Society’s new interdisciplinary, open-access journal exclusively for quantitative biological research.
An article appearing in Physical Review B catalyzes discussion of the balance between transparency in scholarly publications, timely dissemination of results, and intellectual property.
The American Physical Society (APS), publisher of the Physical Review journals, is joining more than 20,000 individuals and organizations across 160 countries in a commitment to improve how researchers and their contributions to the scientific record are evaluated. APS is proud to mark the 10th anniversary of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) by officially signing on to the international initiative.
View an interview with PRX Life Lead Editor Margaret Gardel and Managing Editor Serena Bradde from the 2023 APS March Meeting for more information on the journal.
APS is pleased to announce that Dr. Stephen Nagler of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has been selected to succeed Dr. Laurens Molenkamp as Lead Editor of Physical Review B. The transition to Dr. Nagler will be effective as of February 1st, 2023.
The American Physical Society’s Board of Directors has appointed Randall Kamien as Editor in Chief effective January 1, 2023.
APS is pleased to announce the launch of the newest Physical Review title, PRX Life. PRX Life will offer scientists from a broad range of disciplines—including physics, biology, chemistry, engineering, and medicine—a high impact, fully open access journal dedicated to publishing outstanding research at all scales of biological organization.
APS congratulates the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when separated. Their results clear the way for new technology based on quantum information.
The American Physical Society (APS), along with AIP Publishing, IOP Publishing (IOPP), and Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA), surveyed over 3,000 physical science researchers between December 2021 and January 2022 in an effort to understand their perspective on Open Access (OA) publishing. Their responses have been compiled into a report, which will help APS and other publishers better meet the publishing needs of the research community.
APS is now accepting nominations of members, including self-nominations, for the newly restructured role of APS Editor in Chief (EIC).
APS has selected 146 Outstanding Referees for 2022 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
The American Physical Society (APS) is delighted to announce the appointment of David Scanlon, Professor of Computational Materials Design, University College London, United Kingdom, to the role of Lead Editor of PRX Energy, APS’s new, highly selective, open access journal covering energy science and technology. Professor Scanlon will serve as the inaugural Lead Editor of the journal, which will open for submissions December 7, 2021 and offer an introductory promotion in which all article publication charges (APCs) will be paid by APS through the end of 2022.
APS congratulates the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”
Professor Parisi has authored several papers with Physical Review journals. A selection of relevant papers from Physical Review Letters and Reviews in Modern Physics have been made free-to-read.
Patrick Charbonneau, Eric I. Corwin, Giorgio Parisi, and Francesco Zamponi, Universal Microstructure and Mechanical Stability of Jammed Packings, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 205501 (2012).
M. Mézard, G. Parisi, N. Sourlas, G. Toulouse, and M. Virasoro, Nature of the Spin-Glass Phase, Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1156 (1984).
G. Parisi, Infinite Number of Order Parameters for Spin-Glasses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1754 (1979).
Paolo Rissone, Eric I. Corwin, and Giorgio Parisi, Long-Range Anomalous Decay of the Correlation in Jammed Packings, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 038001 (2021).
Giorgio Parisi and Francesco Zamponi, Mean-field theory of hard sphere glasses and jamming, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 789 (2010).
Giorgio Parisi, Order Parameter for Spin-Glasses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1946 (1983).
The American Physical Society (APS) today released the details of its name change policy for the Physical Review journals. The policy is intended to make the world’s leading physics journals more inclusive and ensure authors retain ownership of prior work published under a different name.
At the beginning of 2021, eight Physical Review journals began publishing Letters which are intended for the accelerated publication of important new results targeted to the specific readership of each journal.
APS has selected 151 Outstanding Referees for 2021 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
Yonko Millev, Anthony Begley, and Laurens Molenkamp look back at last year and look forward to 2021.
It is with great sadness that we mourn the passing in November 2020 of our former colleague, Jack Sandweiss, who was Editor of PRL for a quarter of a century (1987-2013).
Starting January 1, 2021, the Rapid Communications article type will be renamed to Letters. With this change, all eight Physical Review journals that had previously classified articles of the type “Rapid Communications” will adopt the practice of Physical Review Applied and now publish such articles as Letters.
APS Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, discusses a new opportunity for communicating authors to include their pronouns together with their contact email in order to promote a more respectful, inclusive, and equitable environment.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, which has been awarded for discoveries about black holes, one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe. This year’s prize is awarded to Roger Penrose (University of Oxford), Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and University of California, Berkeley), and Andrea Ghez (University of California, Los Angeles).
7 July, 2020
APS and the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG) have finalized the terms of a strategic partnership that allows MPG authors to easily publish open access in all hybrid and gold Physical Review journals at no direct cost to authors. At the center of the collaboration is APS’s first “read and publish” pilot, covering the calendar year 2020, and building upon the long-standing relationship between APS and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL).
Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, celebrates the 50th anniversary of Physical Review A, B, C, and D.
APS has selected 147 Outstanding Referees for 2020 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
We celebrate the life of Kelvin Lynn (1948–2020). He was an Associate Editor for PRL and PRB from 1984 until 2012, while working at Brookhaven National Laboratory and Washington State University. He was part of the “gang of four” editors who helped run PRL for a year while Gene Wells was on sabbatical, during the rush of papers on high-temperature superconductivity. He was a dedicated and spirited editor, who handled countless papers over the years. Our condolences go to his family.
APS congratulates the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology”, and Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.” Read more in this update from APS News.
APS has selected 143 Outstanding Referees for 2019 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
The first update to REVTeX since 2010 is now available. REVTeX 4.2 includes bug fixes, improved functionality, and support for more societies and journals. For more information, please visit the REVTeX home page.
APS congratulates the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Arthur Ashkin “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems,” and Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”
PhySH, APS’s physics classification scheme, is now publicly available under a Creative Commons CC0 license. Created to provide a fully open, high-quality classification scheme for the entire physics community, PhySH groups concepts into a flexible hierarchy that organizes content by topics.
15 May, 2018
The conference organizers and the editors of Physical Review are pleased to announce the program for the Physical Review Journals Symposium at Metamaterials 2018. This special session will feature four talks based on select works published in the Physical Review journals. In addition to this session, there will be a meet-and-greet event with the Physical Review editors.
As a service to the community, APS has made “Physics Physique физика” freely available online. This small journal published fewer than 100 articles between 1964-1968 and includes papers by many notable physicists, including J. S. Bell’s paper “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox.”
The late Peter Adams, founding editor of Physical Review B (PRB), impishly used to say that the journal was created in 1970 because The Physical Review had reached its binding limit. Apocryphal as that sounds, the birth of PRB couldn’t have happened sooner because solid state physics, the core charge of the journal, would soon morph into the broader arena of condensed matter physics (CMP) and then materials physics.
The late Peter Adams, founding editor of Physical Review B (PRB), impishly used to say that the journal was created in 1970 because The Physical Review had reached its binding limit. Apocryphal as that sounds, the birth of PRB couldn’t have happened sooner because solid state physics, the core charge of the journal, would soon morph into the broader arena of condensed matter physics (CMP) and then materials physics.
APS has selected 147 Outstanding Referees for 2018 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
The Physical Review journals and Reviews of Modern Physics now make Corrections of minor errors in published papers.
4 January, 2018
Publisher Matthew Salter and Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, kick off the 125th anniversary of The Physical Review and 25th anniversary of Physical Review E.
Together with the conference organizers, the editors of the Physical Review Journals are pleased to announce a special symposium of invited talks at Metamaterials 2018, highlighting some of the latest works within and beyond the traditional domain of metamaterials research.
APS congratulates Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne for winning the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
APS News Article
A reiteration of the focus of each journal in the main Physical Review series that publishes papers related to materials research.
Together with the conference organizers, the editors of Physical Review Letters, Physical Review X, Physical Review B, Physical Review Applied, and Physical Review Materials are pleased to announce a special symposium on August 28, dedicated to a few select works published recently in the Physical Review journals, within and beyond the traditional domain of metamaterials research.
The symposium will be followed by a meet-and-greet event with the Physical Review editors.
On July 18, 2017, APS, along with the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), has taken an important step towards working more closely with the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) system of unique identifiers by signing the ORCID open letter requiring the collection of ORCID iDs in their publishing processes.
Starting on July 11, APS will begin participating in the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), a collaboration among scholarly publishers to make information freely available about what papers are cited by a given journal article. This information had always been available to those subscribing to the Physical Review journals, but now the citation data will be open to all.
Nuclear physicist Michael Thoennessen has been selected to become APS Editor in Chief at the end of August 2017. Currently an Associate Director of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University (MSU) in Lansing, Michigan, and University Distinguished Professor of Physics at MSU, he was appointed following a vote of the APS Board of Directors on June 16.
APS is now accepting submissions for Physical Review Materials, the newest member of the Physical Review family of journals. PRMaterials expands the scope of the existing APS journals beyond their current emphasis on the physics of materials and will begin publishing mid-2017.
After a thoughtful, deliberative process involving an examination of the alignment of the values of APS with the goals of the March for Science on April 22 in Washington, D.C., the APS Council Steering Committee, on behalf of the Council of Representatives, unanimously voted to endorse the march.
The journals of the American Physical Society welcome and will continue to welcome manuscripts from all countries, with publication based on scientific merit alone.
APS is excited to announce the launch of Physical Review Materials, the latest addition to the Physical Review family of journals. Targeted to start publishing in mid 2017, PRMaterials will provide a common publication and reference source to the expanding community of physicists, materials scientists, chemists, engineers, and researchers in related disciplines that carry out high-quality original research in materials.
APS has selected 150 Outstanding Referees for 2017 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.
APS congratulates David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, and J. Michael Kosterlitz for winning the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical discoveries using topological concepts.
Pierre Meystre of the University of Arizona has been appointed Editor in Chief of the Physical Review research journals.
We are saddened by the passing on April 16 of our dear colleague Peter Adams, one of the founders of the Physical Review family of journals. We offer our heartfelt condolences to his family.
APS has selected 146 Outstanding Referees for 2016 that have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees for 2016 is available online.
4 January, 2016
Associate Editor Manolis Antonoyiannakis discusses the highlighting, as Editors’ Suggestions, of a small percentage of the papers published each week. We highlight papers primarily for their importance and impact in their respective fields, or because we find them particularly interesting or elegant. It turns out that the additional layer of scrutiny involved in the selection of papers as Editors’ Suggestions is associated with a significantly elevated and sustained citation impact.
Asia-Pacific region publishing manager for UK Institute of Physics to join top management staff of the American Physical Society.
APS congratulates Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. Their prize-winning research is free to read in Physical Review Letters.
The APS Office of Public Affairs (OPA), in partnership with the American Chemical Society (ACS) and the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), have established the Liquid Helium Purchasing Program (LHeP2) to improve liquid helium purchasing for researchers who receive federal funding. OPA pilot tested LHeP2 with a small group and is now expanding the program to additional participants, with priority given to APS and ACS Members. Interested parties should contact OPA by September 25. Additional details and contact information is available on the LHeP2 website.
Gene Sprouse, Editor in Chief of the APS research journals since March 2007, has stepped down from the position as of April 28, 2015. Read more in APS News.
Sharon Glotzer discusses the growth of soft condensed matter research, and the formation of the new APS Topical Group, GSOFT, in a Guest Editorial in Physical Review Letters
Starting January 1, 2015, all Physical Review journals will allow article titles in the reference list.
APS Editor in Chief Gene Sprouse discusses the new role of Physical Review X as APS's highly selective and broadly accessible journal, that publishes a small number of key papers from all areas of physics in APS's nonprofit, science-first publishing tradition.
The American Physical Society congratulates the 2014 Nobel Prize Winners in Physics and Chemistry.
The physics laureates Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University and Nagoya University), Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University), and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, Santa Barbara) have been recognized for their work that led to the invention of the blue light-emitting diode, a fundamental stepping stone towards the realization of new environmentally friendly and energy efficient light sources.
The chemistry laureates Eric Bertzig (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Stefan W. Hell (Max Planck Institute and German Cancer Research Center), and William E. Moerner (Stanford Univerisity) have been recognized for their work in improving the resolution of optical microscopy, in particular the development of a super-resolved fluorescence microscope.
“It’s a great year for optics,” said Pierre Meystre (University of Arizona Regents’ Professor of Physics and Optical Sciences, Physical Review Letters Lead Editor), “with blue LEDs winning the Physics Nobel yesterday and fluorescence microscopy winning the Chemistry prize today. It shows that wonderful things are happening in optics from saving enormous amounts of energy with efficient lighting to helping with life-saving medical advances that rely on super-resolution imaging. They are completely different technologies, but both light-based, and next year is the International Year of Light, so the timing couldn’t be better.”
Many remarkable papers from these scientists contributed to this development. These include Moerner’s seminal 1989 work on optical detection and spectroscopy of single molecules in a solid, which was published in Physical Review Letters. This paper is now freely available on our website.
The American Physical Society has launched full-text HTML versions of more than 200,000 articles throughout the APS journal collection from as early as 2003. Users can now access APS content using high-quality navigation features and mobile-friendly math displays across a range of devices.
PRB editors regularly engage the Editorial Board for advice on individual papers. Our intent is to incorporate the voice of the physics community at large in calibrating our standards. Such advice often comes at the initial stage of the review process when the editors decide whether to send the paper to referees or not.
The editors of the APS journals have selected 143 new Outstanding Referees for 2014, out of more than 50,000 currently active referees.
Laurens Molenkamp, Editor of PRB, wins the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Laurens is one of 11 winners of the 2014 Leibniz Prize and was chosen for his pioneering work in semiconductor spintronics. As the world's first researcher to succeed in the experimental realization of topological insulators, Laurens's work is leading the way to build even smaller and more powerful computer chips. The award will be presented March 12, 2014, by the DFG in Berlin.
ORCID is celebrating its one-year anniversary today, and APS is proud to have been a Launch Partner and to continue as a Platinum Sponsor of the ORCID Registry. We encourage all authors who have not yet registered for an ORCID identifier to visit the APS Author Profile application to sign up and help meet the goal of 500,000 researchers signed up by the end of 2013.
8 October, 2013
Readers can now conveniently access APS journals from home, on mobile devices, or while traveling by linking their institution’s subscriptions to their personal APS Journal Account. To link the subscriptions, simply click on the new Go Mobile! button that appears on article pages when accessing the journals from your institution.
The editors of the APS journals have selected 142 new Outstanding Referees for 2013, out of more than 60,000 currently active referees. Initiated in 2008, the highly selective Outstanding Referee program recognizes scientists who have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the APS journals. Selections are based on two decades of records on the number, quality, and timeliness of referee reports. The 2013 honorees come from 27 different countries, with large contingents from the US, Germany, UK, Canada, and France. The decisions were difficult and there are many excellent referees who have yet to be recognized. By means of the program, APS expresses appreciation to all referees, whose efforts in peer review not only keep the standards of the journals at a high level, but in many cases also help authors to improve the quality and readability of their articles—even those that are not published by APS. For more information and a listing of all Outstanding Referees, please visit http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees.
25 January, 2012
We now have an RSS feed on topological insulators. Our topical feeds are curated by the Editors and provide a convenient way to keep up with papers of interest from all APS journals. See our RSS Feeds page to subscribe to this new feed and to view the full list of available feeds.