''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 ''Journal Citation Reports'' (''JCR'') is an annual publicationby Clarivate Analytics (previously the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters). It has been integrated with the Web of Science and is accessed from the Web of Science-Core Collec ...

impact factor The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as ...

and the journal ''h''-index proposed by

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes ...

, many physicists and other scientists consider ''Physical Review Letters'' to be one of the most prestigious journals in the field of

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

. ''According to Google Scholar, PRL is the journal with the 9th journal h-index among all scientific journals'' ''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 Basic research, also called pure research or fundamental research, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenomena. In contrast, applied resear ...

on all topics related to all fields of

. 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 Lead Editor is Hugues Chaté. The Managing Editor is Robert Garisto.

Scope and organizational format

''Physical Review Letters'' is an internationally read physics journal with 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 mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistr ...

Quantum information Quantum information is the information of the state of a quantum system. It is the basic entity of study in quantum information theory, and can be manipulated using quantum information processing techniques. Quantum information refers to both t ...

, etc. * Gravitation and astrophysics *

Elementary particle In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a subatomic particle that is not composed of other particles. Particles currently thought to be elementary include electrons, the fundamental fermions ( quarks, leptons, a ...

s and

fields Fields may refer to: Music * Fields (band), an indie rock band formed in 2006 * Fields (progressive rock band), a progressive rock band formed in 1971 * ''Fields'' (album), an LP by Swedish-based indie rock band Junip (2010) * "Fields", a song b ...

Nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies the ...

Atomic, molecular, and optical physics Atomic, molecular, and optical physics (AMO) is the study of matter-matter and light-matter interactions; at the scale of one or a few atoms and energy scales around several electron volts. The three areas are closely interrelated. AMO theory in ...

Nonlinear dynamics In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other ...

, Fluid dynamics,

Classical optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

, etc. * Plasma and beam physics *

Condensed matter Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the su ...

: Structure, etc. *Condensed Matter: Semiconductor-Electronic properties, etc. *

Polymer A polymer (; Greek '' poly-'', "many" + ''-mer'', "part") is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules called macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic a ...

, Soft matter, Biological, and Interdisciplinary physics Worthy of note is a section at the front of the table of contents which consists of articles that are highlighted for their particular importance and interest. This section contains articles suggested by the editors of the journal or which have been covered by the site "Physics" (formerly ''

Physical Review Focus ''Physical Review Focus'' was an internet service of the American Physical Society that began in 1998, aiming to explain new developments in physics in a language understandable to the educated non-physicist. One or two short articles were publishe ...

'').

Historical overview

On May 20, 1899, 36

physicists A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...

gathered to establish the American Physical Society at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, in the

City of New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. 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 A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination ...

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. During the late 1950s, the then editor Sam Goudsmit collected, organized and published Letters to the Editor of Physical Review into a new standalone journal. This established the ''Physical Review Letters'', Volume 1, Issue 1 was published on July 1, 1958 (see archives link). As the years passed the research fields in physics multiplied, and so did the number of submissions. Consequently, ''Physical Review'' was divided into five separate sections after December 1969 into ''Physical Review A'', ''B'', ''C'', ''D'' and ''E'', which are distinct from ''Physical Review Letters''.

Abstracting, indexing, and impact factor

''Physical Review Letters'' is indexed in the following bibliographic databases: *

Chemical Abstracts CAS (formerly Chemical Abstracts Service) is a division of the American Chemical Society. It is a source of chemical information. CAS is located in Columbus, Ohio, United States. Print periodicals ''Chemical Abstracts'' is a periodical index tha ...

* Computer & Control Abstracts *Current Physics Index *Electrical & Electronics Index *

Energy Research Abstracts The ''Energy Citations Database (ECD)'' was created in 2001 in order to make scientific literature citations, and electronic documents, publicly accessible from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and its predecessor agencies, at no cost to the u ...

GeoRef __NOTOC__ The GeoRef database is a bibliographic database that indexes scientific literature in the geosciences, including geology. Coverage ranges from 1666 to the present for North American literature, and 1933 to the present for the rest of t ...

* INSPEC *

International Aerospace Abstracts CSA (formerly ''Cambridge Scientific Abstracts'') was a division of Cambridge Information Group and provider of online databases, based in Bethesda, Maryland before merging with ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2007. CSA hosted databases of ...

* Mathematical Reviews *

Medline MEDLINE (Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, or MEDLARS Online) is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medic ...

Metals Abstracts CSA (formerly ''Cambridge Scientific Abstracts'') was a division of Cambridge Information Group and provider of online databases, based in Bethesda, Maryland before merging with ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2007. CSA hosted databases of ...

* Nuclear Science Abstracts * Physics Abstracts *PubSCIENCE * SPIN * World Aluminum Abstracts

References

External links

*
All Volumes and Issues

Collections of articles

50th Anniversary Milestone Papers

"Physics"
{{Authority control Physics journals Publications established in 1958 Weekly journals English-language journals American Physical Society academic journals

Scope and organizational format

Historical overview

Abstracting, indexing, and impact factor

See also

References

External links