Physical Review (abbreviated as
Phys. Rev.) is an
American scientific journal founded in 1893 by
Edward Nichols. It publishes
original research and
scientific and
literature reviews on all aspects of
physics. It is published by the
American Physical Society. The journal is in its third series, and is split in several sub-journals each covering a particular field of physics. It has a sister journal,
Physical Review Letters which publishes shorter articles of broader interest.
History
Physical Review commenced publication in July 1893, organized by
Cornell University professor
Edward Nichols and helped by the new President of Cornell,
J. Gould Schurman. The journal was managed and edited at Cornell in upstate
New York from 1893 to 1913 by Nichols,
Ernest Merritt, and
Frederick Bedell. The 33 volumes published during this time constitute
Physical Review Series I.
The
American Physical Society (APS), founded in 1899, took over its publication in 1913 and started
Physical Review Series II. The journal remained at Cornell under editor
G. S. Fulcher from 1913 to 1926, before relocating to the location of Editor
John Torrence Tate[Not to be confused with his son, the number theorist John Torrence Tate Jr.] at the
University of Minnesota. In 1929, the APS started publishing
Reviews of Modern Physics, a venue for longer review articles.
During the
Great Depression, wealthy scientist
Alfred Loomis anonymously paid the journal's fees for authors who could not afford them.
After Tate's death in 1950, the journals were managed on an interim basis still in Minnesota by
E. L. Hill and
John Buchta until
Samuel Goudsmit and
Simon Pasternak were appointed and the editorial office moved to the
Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) on the east end of
Long Island,
New York. In July 1958, the sister journal
Physical Review Letters was introduced to publish short articles of particularly broad interest, initially edited by
George L. Trigg, who remained as Editor until 1988.
In 1970,
Physical Review split into sub-journals
Physical Review A,
B,
C, and
D. A fifth member of the family,
Physical Review E, was introduced in 1993 to a large part to accommodate the huge amount of new research in
nonlinear dynamics. Combined, these constitute
Physical Review Series III.
The editorial office moved in 1980 to its present location across the street from BNL. Goudsmit retired in 1974 and Pasternack in the mid-1970s.
B. Chalmers-Frazer was Managing Editor from 1974 until 1980, helped by
Robert K. Adair and
James Krumhansl. Past Editors-in-Chief include
David Lazarus (1980—1990), from
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Benjamin Bederson (1990—1996), from
New York University, and
Martin Blume (1996—2007), from
BNL. The current Editor In Chief is
Gene Sprouse from
SUNY, Stony Brook.
In 1998, the first issue of
Physical Review Special Topics: Accelerators and Beams was published, and in 2005,
Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research was launched) .
Physical Review also started an online magazine,
Physical Review Focus, in 1998 to explain, and provide historical context for, selected articles from
Physical Review and
Physical Review Letters. The Special Topics journals are
open access;
Physics Education Research requires page charges from the authors, but
Physical Review Special Topics: Accelerators and Beams does not. Though not open access,
Physical Review Letters also requires an author page charge, although this is voluntary. The other journals require such a charge only if they are not prepared in one of the preferred formats.
Recently, the APS launched a new publication entitled
Physics, aiming to help physicists and physics students to learn about new developments outside of their own subfield.
All of the journals of the APS are recognized internationally as among the best and well known in physics. Many of the most famous physics papers published in the 20th century have appeared in the pages of the
Physical Review family of journals.
Current
- Physical Review Letters celebrated their 50th birthday in 2008.
- The APS announced that it has revised its copyright policy to permit the author to reuse parts of the published article in a derivative or new work, including on Wikipedia.
Journals
Notes and references
Notes:
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