APS is pleased to announce that all short research articles intended for accelerated publication of important new results in the Physical Review journals will now be published as Letters, aligning with the nomenclature familiar to the scientific communities we serve. 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, and cease offering the Rapid Communication article type.
These journals are:
* Physical Review A
* Physical Review B
* Physical Review C
* Physical Review D
* Physical Review E
* Physical Review Fluids
* Physical Review Materials
* Physical Review Research
Across the physical sciences community — including funding agencies and promotion and hiring committees — Letter is the established and recognized descriptor for short, significant papers that enable quick dissemination of important research results. For over 60 years this has been exemplified by Physical Review Letters, the world’s premier physics letter journal and a flagship publication of APS.
By making this change, APS is modifying our article types to be consistent across our publications and aligned with the conventions of the communities served by our journals. Additionally, APS aims to maximize value and recognition for our authors by ensuring that researchers, funding agencies, and promotion and hiring committees clearly understand the impact and significance of the Letters published in the Physical Review journals.
Letters receive priority handling to ensure prompt publication of significant new results, but this change will also clarify and streamline the process for transferring Letters submissions from one title to another within the Physical Review family during editorial consideration. This can improve author experience by potentially reducing time to publication, eliminating confusion, and maximizing the number of suitable options available to authors.
Beginning December 7, 2020, authors will no longer be offered the Rapid Communication as an article type option in our manuscript submission system, and journals previously offering Rapid Communications will introduce the Letter article type as an option. Manuscripts already in the peer review process under the classification of Rapid Communication and accepted into one of the journals listed above will be reclassified as Letters if they are scheduled to publish on or after January 1, 2021. Previously published Rapid Communications will not be reclassified retroactively.
Four online-only, fully open access titles published by APS — Physical Review X, PRX Quantum, Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, and Physical Review Physics Education Research — will continue to take a flexible approach to research article lengths and format, and so will not introduce Letters as an article type at this time.