Physical Review Letters
Abbreviated title (ISO 4)
|Phys. Rev. Lett.|
|Edited by||Pierre Meystre
Reinhardt B. Schuhmann
|Frequency||52 per year|
Physical Review Letters (PRL), established in 1958, is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society. As also confirmed by various measurement standards, which include the Journal Citation Reports impact factor and the journal h-index proposed by Google Scholar, many physicists and other scientists consider Physical Review Letters one of the most prestigious journals in the field of physics.:680
PRL is published as a print journal, and is in electronic format, online and CD-ROM. Its focus is rapid dissemination of significant, or notable, results of fundamental research on all topics related to all fields of physics. This is accomplished by rapid publication of short reports, called "Letters". Papers are published and available electronically one article at a time. When published in such a manner, the paper is available to be cited by other work. The new Leading Editor is Pierre Meystre. The Managing Editor is Reinhardt B. Schuhmann.
Scope and organizational format
Physical Review Letters is an internationally read physics journal, describing a diverse readership. Advances in physics, as well as cross disciplinary developments, are disseminated weekly, via this publication. Topics covered by this journal are also the explicit titles for each section of the journal. Sections are delineated (in the table of contents) as follows:
- General Physics: 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, etc.
- Plasma and Beam physics
- Condensed matter: Structure, etc.
- Condensed Matter: Semiconductor-Electronic properties, etc.
- Soft matter, Biological, and Interdisciplinary physics
Worthy of note is a section which consists of emphasized articles. This section is designed to be articles suggested by the editors of the journal, which have been covered by Viewpoint in Physics. Further criteria for these selections are these may be features in Physical Review Focus, or these selections are worthy of note for other reasons.
Brief historical overview
On May 20, 1899, 36 physicists gathered to establish the American Physical Society at Columbia University, in the City of New York. These 36 decided that the mission of the APS would be "to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics". In the beginning the dissemination of physics knowledge took place only through quarterly scientific meetings. In 1913, the APS took over the operation of Physical Review, already in existence since 1893. Hence, journal publication also became an important goal, second only to its original mission. Physical Review was followed by Reviews of Modern Physics in 1929, and by Physical Review Letters in 1958. Volume 1, Issue 1 was published on July 1, 1958 (See archives link). As the years passed the fields of physics have multiplied, and the number of submissions has grown. Consequently, Physical Review has been subdivided into five separate sections, which are distinct from Physical Review Letters.
Abstracting, indexing, and impact factor
- 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers
- American Journal of Physics
- Annales Henri Poincaré
- CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
- Physical Review E
- Physics Today
- "About Physical Review Letters". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
- Bollen, J.; Rodriguez, M. A.; Van de Sompel, H. (2006). "Journal Status". Scientometrics 69 (3): 669–87. arXiv:cs/0601030. doi:10.1007/s11192-006-0176-z.
The Prestigious Journal category reveals a collection of highly esteemed Physics journals: Journal of Applied Physics, Physical Review E, Physical Review Letters, and the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials to name a few.
- "English - Google Scholar Metrics". Google Scholar. 2015. Retrieved 18 January 2015. According Google Scholar, PRL is the journal with the 9th journal h-index among all scientific journals
- "New associate editor for Physical Review Letters". Central Laser Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. 2011. Retrieved 2010-12-31.
Professor Peter Norreys has been appointed Divisional Associate Editor for the American physical society's most prestigious journal "Physical Review Letters" for three years, starting from 1st January 2011..
- "Physical Review Letters Staff". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
- "Table of Contents". Physical Review Letters 102 (17). 1 May 2009.
- "Table of Contents". Physical Review Letters 105 (1). 2 July 2010.
- "Society History". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2010-07-09.
- "Table of Contents". Physical Review Letters 1 (1). 1 July 1958. Retrieved 2010-07-09.