Physical Review X
Physical Review X (PRX) is an online-only, fully open access journal that places a high value on innovation, quality, and long-term impact in the science it publishes. It seeks to publish a select set of papers from all areas of pure, applied, and interdisciplinary physics that have the potential to influence current and future research and to have a long-lasting and profound impact in their relevant fields.
Breaking New Ground in Physics
Reflecting the diversity and dynamics of today’s physics research, PRX showcases research in established core areas of physics that achieves breakthroughs in technology, experiment, and theory, or that represents a paradigm shift in understanding. The journal also publishes creative, impactful research that brings together multiple physics fields, or bridges physics with other disciplines.
PRX is renowned for its highly personalized and responsive editorial process that brings together authors, editors, and referees in an interactive, reasoned dialog to guide each article through the rigorous selection process and produce the best possible outcome. PRX realizes that not all research can be adequately described in only a few pages. The journal therefore offers flexible article lengths and formats that allow authors to engage and inform a broad audience, while also providing the scientific substance sought by specialists.
By Scientists, For Scientists
Like all of the journals in the Physical Review family, PRX is shaped by researchers to serve the research community. This commitment ensures that its mission and standards prioritize the needs of researchers and authors, not commercial publishing interests. The journal is international, with approximately three-fifths of published articles originating from outside the U.S. Physical Review’s reach is far and wide, with authors and referees from over 130 countries.
PRX Scope
PRX covers the full spectrum of subject areas in physics and pays particular attention to innovative interdisciplinary research of wide impact.
PRX Acceptance Criteria
Submitted manuscripts should meet one or more of the following criteria:
Make a fundamental theoretical and/or experimental discovery.
Create a new paradigm or make a paradigm shift.
Establish a fruitful analogy or connection between different subfields or topical areas of physics, or between physics and other scientific disciplines.
Push an established field into a new direction.
Significantly advance the state of the art of a field, or provide important and substantive follow-up developments to path-breaking papers.
Open Access
At the core of APS's mission is a commitment to meeting the needs of physicists, a community that has been at the leading edge of open access. Physical Review X is a fully open access journal that allows readers anywhere in the world access to its entire content free at the point of delivery.
PRX authors pay an article-processing charge (APC) (current APS APCs) to make accepted manuscripts available under a CC-BY (4.0 International) license. In keeping with APS's community orientation, this is the most permissive license available and permits anyone to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work with proper attribution. Authors retain copyright to their articles under this license.
The APC for PRX will be reviewed regularly to ensure that it offers a reasonable and cost-effective publishing option for authors in line with APS’s status as a not-for-profit society publisher.
APS authors are free to post the final version of their articles on their laboratory, institutional or departmental web sites.
APS makes its journals free to read at U.S. public libraries and high schools by application. Contact
publisher@aps.org for more information.
APS is a founding member of CHORUS, which enables distributed public access to published research articles reporting on U.S. federal government-funded research.
Publication costs are waived for authors from countries for which APS offers free online access to its subscription journals.
More on APS Open Access Policies, Processes & Partnerships
Editorial Board
The PRX editorial board is a diverse group of active, distinguished scientists, selected by editors and appointed by the editor in chief. Board members serve three-year terms. They may be requested by the editors to advise at any stage of the review process and they serve as adjudicators in formal appeals. PRX’s editorial board serves as a community-based sounding board for the ongoing evolution of the journal and its editorial policies.
Editorial Staff
PRX is managed by a professional editorial team of Ph.D. scientists with extensive research experience at major academic institutions and research laboratories around the world. All editorial decisions are based on PRX acceptance criteria.
High Visibility, Broad Dissemination
PRX authors gain high visibility and achieve broad dissemination of their work by publishing in a high-impact, online-only publication that offers global free access. The editors bring attention to outstanding research and elucidate its importance through a number of features:
Popular Summaries: Each article appears with a non-technical popular summary, disseminating the article’s main results to a broad readership.
Featured in Physics: Editors regularly notify Physics, APS’s daily online news and commentary publication, about important papers, resulting in coverage such as Viewpoint: Where the Weyl Things Are, Viewpoint: New Entry in the Thermodynamic Rulebook for Quantum Systems, and Viewpoint: History is Written by the Survivors.
Publicity: APS promotes press-worthy papers from its journals to journalists through a weekly Tip Sheet, resulting in frequent coverage in industry publications and the popular press, such as Scientific American, Physics World, and Ars Technica.
Social Media: Follow PRX on Twitter @PhysRevX.
Editorial and Publishing Policies
All Physical Review journals share many common policies, covering professional conduct, publication rights, copyright, research involving animal and human subjects, and open access. A comprehensive Physical Review journals guide (including author and referee service details) and PRX-specific editorial policies and practices are both available.
PRX is published electronically one article at a time. Online issues of the journal are published quarterly. Articles are identified by volume number and a six digit article number, for example, Phys. Rev. X 7, 021045 (2017).
PRX editors accelerate the review process for a small number of manuscripts that report particularly important or groundbreaking research.