Physical Review
Encyclopedia
Physical Review is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 scientific journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...

 founded in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research and scientific and literature review
Literature review
A literature review is a body of text that aims to review the critical points of current knowledge including substantive findings as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to a particular topic...

s on all aspects of physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

. It is published by the American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...

. 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
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters , established in 1958, is a peer reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society...

which publishes shorter articles of broader interest.

History

Physical Review commenced publication in July 1893, organized by Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

 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
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 from 1893 to 1913 by Nichols, Ernest Merritt
Ernest Merritt
Ernest George Merritt was Dean of the Graduate School, Cornell University; Chair of the Physics Department.-Early life and career :...

, and Frederick Bedell. The 33 volumes published during this time constitute Physical Review Series I.

The American Physical Society
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society is the world's second largest organization of physicists, behind the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the world renowned Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than 20...

 (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 TateNot to be confused with his son, the number theorist
Number theory
Number theory is a branch of pure mathematics devoted primarily to the study of the integers. Number theorists study prime numbers as well...

 John Torrence Tate Jr.
at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...

. In 1929, the APS started publishing Reviews of Modern Physics
Reviews of Modern Physics
The Reviews of Modern Physics is a journal of the American Physical Society. The journal started in paper form. All volumes are also online by subscription.Issue 1, Volume 1 consisted of the review by...

, a venue for longer review articles.

During the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

, wealthy scientist Alfred Loomis
Alfred Lee Loomis
Alfred Lee Loomis was an American attorney, investment banker, philanthropist, scientist/physicist, pioneer in military radar usages, inventor of the LORAN or Long Range Navigation System, and lifelong patron of scientific research...

 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
Simon Pasternak
Simon Pasternak is a Danish author and publisher. He holds a masters degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Copenhagen....

 were appointed and the editorial office moved to the Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...

 (BNL) on the east end of Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

. In July 1958, the sister journal Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters , established in 1958, is a peer reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society...

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
David Lazarus
David Lazarus is an American business and consumer columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He joined the paper in August 2007.Before joining the LA Times staff in 2007, Lazarus worked as a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a nightly talk radio host for San Francisco's KGO Radio...

 (1980—1990), from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, Benjamin Bederson (1990—1996), from New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, and Martin Blume (1996—2007), from BNL
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Brookhaven National Laboratory , is a United States national laboratory located in Upton, New York on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base...

. The current Editor In Chief is Gene Sprouse from SUNY, Stony Brook.

To celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the journal, a memoir was published jointly by the APS and AIP.

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
Physical Review Focus
Physical Review Focus is an internet service of the American Physical Society, aiming to explain new developments in physics in a language understandable to the educated non-physicist. One or two short articles are published weekly...

, 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
    Copyright
    Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...

     policy to permit the author to reuse parts of the published article in a derivative or new work, including on Wikipedia
    Wikipedia
    Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

    .

Journals

Journal Abbreviation Editor(s) Impact factor
Impact factor
The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed...

Published Scope ISSN Website
Physical Review Series I Phys. Rev. 1893–1912 All of Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

All volumes
Physical Review Series II Phys. Rev. 1913–1969 All of Physics All volumes
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters
Physical Review Letters , established in 1958, is a peer reviewed, scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Physical Society...

Phys. Rev. Lett. Jack Sandweiss
George Basbas
7.621 (2010) 1958–present Important fundamental research in all fields of physics
(web)
1958–2002
2003–present
Physical Review A
Physical Review A
Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published twelve times per year by the American Physical Society in print, online, and CD formats. The main focus of interest is atomic, molecular and optical physics. The editor-in-chief is...

Phys. Rev. A Gordon W. F. Drake 2.861 (2010) 1970–present Atomic, molecular, and optical physics
Atomic, molecular, and optical physics
Atomic, molecular, and optical physics is the study of matter-matter and light-matter interactions on the scale of single atoms or structures containing a few atoms. The three areas are grouped together because of their interrelationships, the similarity of methods used, and the commonality of the...

(print)
(web)
1970–2002
2003–present
Physical Review B Phys. Rev. B Peter D. Adams
Anthony M. Begley
3.772 (2010) 1970–present Condensed matter
Condensed matter physics
Condensed matter physics deals with the physical properties of condensed phases of matter. These properties appear when a number of atoms at the supramolecular and macromolecular scale interact strongly and adhere to each other or are otherwise highly concentrated in a system. The most familiar...

 and materials physics
Materials science
Materials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...

(print)
(web)
1970–2002
2003–present
Physical Review C Phys. Rev. C Benjamin F. Gibson 3.416 (2010) 1970–present Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...

(print)
(web)
1970–2002
2003–present
Physical Review D Phys. Rev. D Erick J. Weinberg
D. L. Nordstrom
4.964 (2010) 1970–present Particles
Particle physics
Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the existence and interactions of particles that are the constituents of what is usually referred to as matter or radiation. In current understanding, particles are excitations of quantum fields and interact following their dynamics...

, fields
Quantum field theory
Quantum field theory provides a theoretical framework for constructing quantum mechanical models of systems classically parametrized by an infinite number of dynamical degrees of freedom, that is, fields and many-body systems. It is the natural and quantitative language of particle physics and...

, gravitation
Gravitation
Gravitation, or gravity, is a natural phenomenon by which physical bodies attract with a force proportional to their mass. Gravitation is most familiar as the agent that gives weight to objects with mass and causes them to fall to the ground when dropped...

, and cosmology
Physical cosmology
Physical cosmology, as a branch of astronomy, is the study of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and is concerned with fundamental questions about its formation and evolution. For most of human history, it was a branch of metaphysics and religion...

(print)
(web)
1970–2002
2003–present
Physical Review E Phys. Rev. E Gary S. Grest
Gary S. Grest
Gary S. Grest is a computational physicist at Sandia National Laboratories. He received the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics from the American Physical Society for his work in computational physics. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2008.-References:...


Dirk Jan Bukman
2.352 (2010) 1993–present Statistical
Statistical physics
Statistical physics is the branch of physics that uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approximations, in solving physical problems. It can describe a wide variety of fields with an inherently stochastic...

, nonlinear
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...

, and soft matter physics
Soft matter
Soft matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical states that are easily deformed by thermal stresses or thermal fluctuations. They include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, and a number of biological materials...

(print)
(web)
1970–2002
2003–present
Physical Review X Phys. Rev. X Jorge Pullin
Jorge Pullin
Jorge Pullin is the Horace Hearne Chair in theoretical Physics at the Louisiana State University, known for his work on black hole collisions and quantum gravity.-Biography:...

2011–present "Broad subject coverage encouraging communication across related fields" All volumes
Physical Review Focus
Physical Review Focus
Physical Review Focus is an internet service of the American Physical Society, aiming to explain new developments in physics in a language understandable to the educated non-physicist. One or two short articles are published weekly...

Phys. Rev. Focus David Ehrenstein
David Ehrenstein
David Ehrenstein is an American critic who focuses primarily on issues of homosexuality in cinema.-Life and career:Ehrenstein was born in New York City. His father was a secular Jew with Polish ancestors, and his mother was of African American and Irish descent. His mother raised him in her...

1998–present Selections from the Physical Review Journals All volumes
Physical Review Special Topics: Accelerators and Beams Phys. Rev. ST AB Frank Zimmermann 1.661 (2010) 1998–present Particle accelerator
Particle accelerator
A particle accelerator is a device that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. An ordinary CRT television set is a simple form of accelerator. There are two basic types: electrostatic and oscillating field accelerators.In...

s and beams
(web) All volumes
Physical Review Special Topics: Physics Education Research Phys. Rev. ST PER Robert Beichner 2.302 (2010) 2005–present Physics education
Physics education
Physics education or physics education research refers both to the methods currently used to teach physics and to an area of pedagogical research that seeks to improve those methods. Historically, physics has been taught at the high school and college level primarily by the lecture method...

(web) All volumes
Physics Physics Jessica Thomas 2008–present All of Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...

(web) All volumes

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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