About Physical Review Letters

In the late 1950's, Editor Sam Goudsmit decided to collect the Letters to the Editor of the Physical Review into a new standalone journal entitled Physical Review Letters (PRL). PRL featured short, important papers from all branches of physics, and quickly assumed a place among the most prestigious publications in any scientific discipline. Today PRL is the world's foremost physics letters journal, providing rapid publication of short reports of significant fundamental research in all fields of physics. International in scope, the journal provides its diverse readership with weekly coverage of major advances in physics and cross disciplinary developments. PRL's topical sections are devoted to general physics (including statistical and quantum mechanics, quantum information, etc.), gravitation and astrophysics; elementary particles and fields; nuclear physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; nonlinear dynamics, fluid dynamics, classical optics; plasma and beam physics; condensed matter; and soft-matter, biological, and interdisciplinary physics.

ISI's Impact and Immediacy Factor Data (2008)

Impact Factor: 7.180
Immediacy Index: 1.974

2008 Publication Numbers

Number of articles: 4,173
Number of pages: 16,265

2009 Publication Projections

Number of articles: 4,000
Number of pages: 16,000

2009 Publication Frequency

Volumes 102, 103 (52 issues)

2009 Subscription Rates

APS Members
Institutional Subscriptions

2008 CD-ROM Edition

$60 per disk with journal subscription

ISSN

0031-9007 (print)
1079-7114 (online)
1092-0145 (CD-Rom)

Article Number

PRL is published electronically one article at a time. Articles are identified by volume number and a six-digit article number (instead of volume and page number), for example, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 015702 (2001). This format allows articles to be fully citable as soon as they are published electronically, while maintaining the same identifier for both the electronic and print version. More information.

Abstracting/Indexing Includes

Chemical Abstracts, Computer & Control Abstracts, Current Physics Index, Electrical & Electronics Index, Energy Research Abstracts, GeoRef, INSPEC, International Aerospace Abstracts, Mathematical Reviews, Medline, Metals Abstracts, Nuclear Science Abstracts, Physics Abstracts, PubSCIENCE, SPIN, World Aluminum Abstracts.

Features for Authors

• Free Color Online - There is no charge for color figures in our online journals. (For print journals there is an additional per figure charge. More information.)
• Free to Read - Authors or other parties may choose to pay a one-time fee to make chosen articles available to all readers at no cost and without a subscription.
• Online Manuscript Submission - Online submission of manuscripts via the web.
• Online Manuscript Status Check - The Author Status Inquiry System (ASIS) allows authors of manuscripts under consideration by our journals to obtain immediate information on the status of their papers electronically.
  • For papers that have been accepted for publication, information about their status in the production process is available via a service maintained by the production vendor. A link to this service is provided as part of the information provided by ASIS for such papers.
• Native Language Author Name Display - Chinese, Japanese, and Korean authors can choose to have their names displayed in their own language.
• Forms and Memos - Direct access to journal-related forms and memos.

Features for Readers

• Editors' Suggestions - Marked papers that the editors hope will lead readers to explore other areas of physics. Please see our Announcement PRL 98, 010001 (2007).
• Email ToC Alerts - Receive table of contents email alerts as new journal issues are complete, in either plain-text (ASCII) or HTML format.
• RSS Feeds - Subscribe to a variety of Editor-selected cross-journal feeds as well as individual journal RSS feeds.
• Accepted Papers Lists - Access listings of recently accepted papers in advance of publication
• Quick Buy Online - Nonsubscribers can purchase journal articles in PDF format via an over-the-web document delivery service at substantial savings over traditional document delivery.
• Article Packs - For APS members, Article Packs allow flexible online access to key research articles spanning all of Physical Review.
• Free Access to Some Content:
  • Browsing the Tables of Contents (PDF and HTML), viewing abstracts, or searching for articles does not require a subscription.
  • Free to Read - Authors or other parties may choose to pay a one-time fee to make chosen articles available to all readers at no cost and without a subscription.