Inside Physical Review Letters

Reinhardt Schuhmann, Editor, PRL

Physical Review Letters receives about 10,000 (!) submissions per year, and publishes about one-third of them. Roughly 65% of the papers originate outside the U.S., as do more than half of the referee reports. The system that has evolved to handle such a large international endeavor is complex. I'll explain how it works using a few statistics and some interesting examples culled from our actual correspondence. Only the names will be changed to protect the (not so) innocent. I'll also discuss some challenges, both perennial and recent, and potential approaches to address them. Finally, I'll give some insight into how we editors decide what to publish, and give some clues on how best to approach an attempt to publish a Letter.

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Last modified 29-December-2004 by website owner: NCNR (attn: )