PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS EDITORIAL POLICIES and PRACTICES (Revised July 2005) Mission of the Journal
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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS EDITORIAL POLICIES AND PRACTICES (Revised July 2005) Mission of the Journal Physical Review Letters, published by the American Physical Society, is charged with providing rapid publication of short reports of important fundamental research in all fields of physics. The journal should provide its diverse readership with coverage of major advances in all aspects of physics and of developments with significant consequences across subdisciplines. Letters should therefore be of broad interest. Acceptance Criteria Physical Review Letters publishes Letters of not more than four of a specific Letter. The opening paragraph should clearly in- journal pages and Comments of not more than one journal page. dicate both the Letter to which the Comment is directed and A Letter must meet specific standards for substance and presen- the criticism. Any submitted Comment or Reply must be cast tation, as judged by rigorous refereeing and editorial review. in a collegial tone, free of polemics. The editors will not ac- cept a Comment on a Letter by any of the authors of the Letter; Substance: The paper must satisfy criteria of validity, impor- the Comment format is not a vehicle for addenda. Neither are tance, and broad interest. The work must be sound, free of de- Comments intended as a means to establish priorities or to rec- tectable error, and presented in reasonable detail. The results tify bibliographic oversights. Papers which clarify or expand must be new and not simply a marginal extension of previously on a Letter without criticism or correction, or which present a published work. Papers of broad interest are those that report general discussion of the topic, are also unsuitable. A correc- a substantial advance in a field of physics or have significant tive Comment will be deemed unnecessary if an Erratum would implications across subfield boundaries. In summary, Physi- suffice. Comments and Replies are subject to the refereeing cal Review Letters publishes papers that keep broadly interested process, and acceptance of a Comment does not guarantee pub- physicists well informed on vital current research. lication of an author's Reply. Papers advancing new theoretical views on fundamental princi- Letters, Comments, and Replies must provide proper citations ples or theories must contain convincing arguments that the new to pertinent earlier work and credit significant contributions by predictions and interpretations are distinguishable from existing nonauthors. Submission to Physical Review Letters is a repre- knowledge, at least in principle, and do not contradict estab- sentation that the paper is not under consideration for publica- lished experimental results. Mathematical and computational tion elsewhere. papers that do not have application to physics are generally not suitable for Physical Review Letters. When a manuscript has several authors, one of them, the cor- Papers that describe proposed experiments fall into a special responding author, should be designated to receive and respond category. For such papers to be acceptable, the experiments to correspondence from the editors. This designation can be must be demonstrated to be novel and feasible. It is the authors' changed upon notification of the editors. It is the responsibil- responsibility to show that their proposal is likely to stimulate ity of the corresponding author to represent all those involved research that might not otherwise be undertaken. with the work reported and to ensure that the content of the manuscript and the list of authors meet with their approval, both Presentation: The diversity of the readership of Physical Re- initially and through any subsequent changes. view Letters places special demands on style. Each article must begin with one or more introductory paragraphs that state, in Authors may not present data and other results obtained by oth- language understandable to the journal's broad readership, the ers as if they were their own. Nor may authors incorporate with- issues it addresses and its primary achievements. out attribution text from the works of another author, even when Each paper should present as complete a discussion as possi- summarizing past results or background material. If a direct ble within the constraints of a short communication. When ap- quotation is appropriate, the quotation should be clearly indi- propriate, a Letter should be followed by a more extensive re- cated as such and the original source should be properly cited. port elsewhere. Papers must be clearly written, with symbols Papers that have been found to be in violation of this rule will defined, figures well drawn, and tables and figures thoroughly be rejected. In such cases, resubmission of the manuscript, even captioned. with the plagiarized text removed, is not ordinarily allowed. However, the Editors may allow exceptions to this policy if war- A comment must correct or criticize an important, central aspect ranted by special circumstances. i Importance of Introductory Paragraphs Physical Review Letters is unique in its commitment to keep sential that these paragraphs be clearly written and comprehen- broadly interested readers well informed on vital current re- sible to nonexperts. To assure compliance, the referees are in- search in all fields of physics. This is achieved with in- structed to pay particular attention to the introductory section. troductory paragraphs that state, for each article, the is- In addition, the editors will make an independent evaluation of sues addressed and the primary achievements. It is es- the adequacy and clarity of the introduction. Submittal of Manuscripts Authors are advised to familiarize themselves with journal crite- should be prepared in one of the acceptable formats; REVTEX ria and standards before preparing a manuscript for submission. (preferred), LATEX, Harvmac, plain TeX, MS Word; PostScript In particular, consultation of the journal's Advice to Referees figures. If the paper is accepted for publication, the file may be and Manuscript Referral form is likely to be of assistance. In converted to XML and used to produce the text of the journal. most cases, the manuscript itself, particularly its introduction, Manuscripts and figures are not routinely returned to authors should make clear why the paper might meet the journal's spe- cial criteria of importance and broad interest; however, in some with correspondence. Authors may request return of the manuscript and/or figures. For any resubmission, please state cases it may be helpful for authors to supplement this with a note directed at the editors and included with the initial submis- whether or not the figures have been modified, and supply new sion. photoreproducible journal-quality figures if there have been such changes. Manuscripts may be submitted by conventional mail or by elec- tronic channels. Submission of manuscripts by facsimile (fax) The Author Status Inquiry System (ASIS) provides informa- is not appropriate; in general, manuscript copies or replacement tion to authors regarding the status of their manuscripts via the World Wide Web at the URL pages from our fax machines are not suitable for use in the com- http://authors.aps. position process. org/STATUS/. Telephone inquiries regarding status are dis- couraged, since the interruption of normal office procedures can A conventional paper manuscript must be double spaced to al- cause delays. In those cases when clarification of the informa- low space for copyediting in the event of publication, of reason- tion from the ASIS is needed, send an electronic-mail message able type size to allow fast yet accurate viewing by keyboarders, to [email protected] (with subject line, for example, Status LM1234 and submitted in quadruplicate with good quality figures. See Jones). “Information for Contributors” at http://prl.aps.org/ Supplementary material associated with an article (e.g., data ta- info/infoL.html or at the beginning of the volume for bles, color image files, multimedia files) may be submitted elec- more details. tronically for joint review. If the article is published this mate- For information about submission via e-print servers or di- rial will be deposited in the electronic Physics Auxiliary Pub- rect Web upload, consult the Web URL http://authors. lication Service (EPAPS) of the American Institute of Physics. aps.org/ESUB/. Electronic-mail submissions should be Information about EPAPS is available via the Authors subpage sent to the Internet address [email protected]. The computer file of prl.aps.org, in the Manuscript Preparation section. Editorial Procedures The following descriptions of ordinary editorial practices are referees for the paper. (The editors divide responsibility among not meant as an exposition of rigid rules - there are few rigid themselves for the different areas of physics.) If the paper is rules - but as an outline of usual practices, presented with the estimated to exceed 4 printed pages by more than 12% (an in- view that some understanding of these procedures may help au- dication that necessary revisions might seriously alter the con- thors and referees deal with the editors. tent), the paper is not sent for review, and a length estimate is sent to the authors. The authors may make suitable changes and resubmit the manuscript. Manuscripts which are too long by Upon receipt of a manuscript, the staff makes an estimate of less than 12% are sent for review, but the authors are advised the length required for publication. If the length is not ex- that a shorter version will be required if the paper is accepted cessive, the paper is given to the appropriate editor who chooses for publication. ii Letters.— Usually the editors send papers to referees, selected the editors attempt to avoid such conflicts in their choice of ref- as representatives of the informed readership which the paper erees, they cannot always be aware of such problems. An au- addresses, for their counsel. Most papers are initially sent to two thor who believes that conflicts are possible may submit a list referees (sometimes one or three).