For some time now the readers and Editors of PRL have concluded that it publishes too many manuscripts. As you may know from the discussions at our DAE dinner meetings at the March, April and other APS meetings, the DAEs also largely share this view. The reasons are the following:
1) PRL is in danger of seeing the best new research results going to Nature, Science, and in recent months, Nature Physics, and other Nature journals.
PRL might become insufficiently selective to be attractive to authors for the"best" papers.
2) The growth of PRL in recent years has made the journal unwieldy to read, even in the areas of one's particular interests.
3) As the journal becomes larger, it unavoidably tends to be viewed as no longer a distillation of the best research results.
The Editors believe that it is now appropriate to raise the standards for acceptance in PRL and are launching an effort to reduce the weekly size significantly. We aim at an ultimate reduction of something like 50%.
A statement of the criteria for PRL is attached. They are not fundamentally different from the previous ones. The difference lies in the rigor with which they are applied. It is this increase in the rigor that will provide the higher selectivity we seek.
Your task in support of this effort is crucially important. We ask the DAEs to consider specifically in their report whether or not the paper would more appropriately be published in a more specialized journal, or to provide reasons why it should be published in PRL.
There will be papers that we would have accepted that will, with the new higher standards, be deemed inappropriate for PRL. These may, probably will, be appealed. It is clear that a common vision of the standards should be held by the Editors and the DAEs. One key question for acceptance will be "will rejection represent a significant loss for PRL?"
We plan to send an email to all referees and authors announcing the new criteria (described briefly below), to explain the rationale for raising the standards, and to state the goal of a significant reduction of the number of papers published each week. In addition we will publish an editorial to explain these plans.
We hope to hear from you and, of course, will highlight these plans at our DAE gatherings during the APS meetings.
Sincerely,
Jack Sandweiss Editor and Chair Divisional Associate Editors Physical Review Letters