When science is the only shareholder in research publishing

When researchers at the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument compiled new evidence that dark energy may evolve over time, they knew it could reshape the standard model of cosmology. They also knew where to share their results: The team presented their work at the 2025 APS Global Physics Summit and submitted their papers to Physical Review D.

DESI’s results are an example of the high-impact research published by APS’ Physical Review journals, long integral to the physics community. The journals date back to 1893, when the inaugural issue of Physical Review was published. The portfolio expanded in 1929 to include Reviews of Modern Physics, which offers a forum for in-depth reviews, and, in 1958, Physical Review Letters, which publishes short reports on major results across all fields of physics.

After Physical Review was split into discipline-specific journals — Physical Review A, B, C, and D in 1970 and Physical Review E in 1993 — the portfolio expanded into other subfields, including physics education and applied research. It now includes 17 international peer-reviewed publications.

According to the 2024 Journal Citation Reports, APS journals are top research publications. Its flagship journal Physical Review Letters, or PRL, remains the most-cited journal in multidisciplinary physics, with 518,700 citations of PRL papers per year. This equates to around one citation every minute.

PRL also has an h index — a measure of how many papers have a certain number of citations — that is 30 more than the next-highest physics journal, evidence that the journal “publishes a very large number of really great papers,” says Robert Garisto, the chief editor.

And while PRL’s impact factor is not as high as other physics journals, Garisto said that the sheer size of the journal means its impact factor is not being propped up by a small number of highly cited papers. “We publish 2,500 to 3,000 papers a year, and we also don't shy away from publishing all areas of physics, [including] areas that are moving a little bit more slowly,” he said.

APS’ flagship journal is also home to many Nobel prize-winning papers. According to a 2019 analysis of the research cited for the physics prizes awarded between 1995 and 2017, more than 25% had been published in PRL.

The journal recently celebrated a major streak: Every year between 2011 and 2023, the Nobel committee cited at least one key PRL paper by the laureate that contributed to the Nobel Prize in physics or chemistry. The 13-year streak began with the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry, awarded for a 1984 paper on the discovery of quasicrystals. The paper had been turned down by chemistry journals, but its importance was “immediately recognized” by PRL editors, Garisto said.

“We’re Ph.D.-trained scientists, and as editors, we have an open-minded approach,” said Garisto. “The start of [the journal’s recent] streak was because we gave that paper a home.”

PRL published the 2017 Nobel Prize-winning gravitational wave observation by LIGO and Virgo as well, a discovery whose publication and promotion had to be carefully guarded by Garisto’s team.

APS’ journals are also home to some of the world’s most highly cited papers, which form the backbone of fundamental research in a range of fields. Of the top ten most cited papers ever, two were published in Physical Review B and one in PRL.

The fourth-most-cited paper ever, “Generalized Gradient Approximation Made Simple,” has been cited nearly 175,000 times since it was published in 1996. Kieron Burke, the interim dean of the School of Physical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, co-authored the paper along with Matthias Ernzerhof while working as a postdoc in the lab of John P. Perdew.

At that time, density functional theory — a method to calculate the electronic structure of atoms, molecules, and condensed phases of material — was “beginning to show some signs of success and impact,” Burke said. A decade after publication, Burke noticed that the study was garnering a lot of citations, which he attributes to the ease of using the method, the paper’s clear explanation, and the growth of fields like materials science and chemistry.

While Burke has since become more involved in chemistry, he said that one of the biggest draws to submitting research to journals like PRL is the ability to have equations — the lingua franca of physics — front and center in the paper. “Good equations should not be in the supplemental info,” he said. Being able to speak in this language helps researchers communicate across fields and “tell a physics story.”

APS and its journals are also vital to the physics community, said Rachel Burley, APS’ Chief Publications Officer. “We have deep connections with the community, our members, those who publish research with us and read our journals,” she said. “That integration makes us unique.”

As part of its commitment to the community, in 2024, APS partnered with the Institute of Physics Publishing and the American Institute of Physics Publishing to create the Purpose-Led Publishing coalition. The coalition — which promises to put purpose above profit — supports the physical science community through a range of initiatives, including sponsoring the APS global physics summit satellite sites. The partnership is also collaborating on developing AI tools to assist peer reviewers.

APS is focused on meeting researchers’ needs in a shifting publication landscape, from changing open science requirements to calls for greater transparency across the peer review and publication process. For example, APS recently earned the top score in an open science assessment by the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, launched a transparent peer review pilot program for PRX Energy, and revamped the journals’ websites to make them more accessible.

PRL, now more than 65 years old, is also working to support the next generation of researchers, says Garisto. The journal now allows joint submissions, which let researchers to simultaneously share their work with specialists and general readers, and it recently launched “End Matter” appendices and an inaugural Collection of the Year.

“We publish some of the best papers in physics ever, but we also publish papers from all areas of physics — both fast-moving and slow-moving [fields],” said Garisto about what sets PRL apart from other journals. “It’s a journal where most [submitted] papers get peer reviewed, and that’s very unusual for a highly selective journal.”

Many scientists agree. For Burke’s highly cited DFT paper, PRL was always “our loadstar of the best physics,” Burke said. “And even though I went off to chemistry, for many years I always used it as my own measure of [whether] I am still doing decent physics.”