Thank you for your interest in Physical Review B, APS’s premier venue for condensed matter and materials physics.
This page guides you through all the steps in the peer-review process, from submission to publication.
Before you submit, be sure to:
Ready to submit?
Visit the APS Submission Server and follow these Web Submission Guidelines
To check the status of your paper at any time, visit the APS Manuscript Status page. You will need your manuscript’s 7-digit Accession Code and the last name of one of the first three authors on your paper.
If you need help with any aspect of the publishing process, please contact APS Help.
The guidelines listed here for preparing your paper for submission are similar across all Physical Review journals. For your convenience, these links take you to specific submission guidelines for Physical Review B:
Regular Articles are original research articles that meet Physical Review B’s editorial criteria and scope.
Letters are original research articles reporting important results that are accessible in a short format. Importance will be assessed based on current interest and significance of the advance to the field. Authors may follow a Letter with a more complete account as a Regular Article. Letters receive priority handling, so authors should justify the need for publication in this format in their submission letter.
Comments critique or correct papers by other authors that were previously published in Physical Review B. Each Comment should contain an abstract and should state clearly the paper to which it refers. See more details about Comments.
An Erratum notifies readers about errors or omissions in previously published papers. See more details about Errata in the Policies and Practices.
Visit this Length Guide for information about length limits for all articles published in the Physical Review journals.
Your manuscript should be written for a general readership, so as to make it understandable to a broad spectrum of researchers, and should avoid unfamiliar terminology except when needed to convey a unique or nuanced meaning.
The key results of the paper should be properly contextualized with regard to related literature.
For tips on writing an effective paper, see this tutorial video on Writing Better Scientific Papers.
A PDF version of your paper is all that’s needed for it to be sent for peer review. However, submitting properly formatted source files in LaTeX (preferred) or Microsoft Word simplifies peer-review because information from your paper can be more easily extracted. These source files also allow your paper to be rapidly prepared for publication if accepted. Source files will be converted to a PDF on submission.
Detailed information on style and formatting is available at APS Journals Style Guide. These Style Basics offer essential tips on formatting and styling the following sections of your paper:
Physical Review B strongly encourages authors to include titles for all references as an aid to the reader and to improve the accuracy of online searches. Authors who elect to use titles in references should use titles in all references.
All articles in the Physical Review journals are published in American English. APS has partnered with Editage to offer the following Language Editing Author Services:
Authors with Chinese, Japanese, or Korean names may choose to have their names published in their native language alongside the English versions of their names in the author list of their publications. See Information About Author Names for details on how to prepare your manuscript.
APS complies with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which make online content accessible to the broadest readership possible. Articles published online should meet the following guidelines:
Supplemental Material is useful information that is not essential to understanding an article’s main results, such as
Refer to the following guidelines when preparing Supplemental Material.
A paper must stand on its own and be understandable and convincing without Supplemental Material. Editors may ask you to incorporate Supplemental Material into a paper as main text or Appendices. Editors may also ask you to convert a Letter into a longer Article to allow for this extra information.
APS stores all Supplemental Material files for a published paper as a single deposit with a dedicated URL. Authors should cite the Supplemental Material in the paper’s reference list and explain its content as follows:
See Supplemental Material at [URL will be inserted by publisher] for [give brief description of material].
All references cited in the Supplemental Material should be listed in the reference section of the main text.
For editorial policies and more details about preparing and depositing Supplemental Material, see Supplemental Material Instructions.
Authors are welcome to submit two or more related or complementary papers to the same journal or to different Physical Review journals. These Joint Submissions enable authors to reach a wider audience and to take advantage of multiple formats across the Physical Review family of journals. For example, you can submit a Letter to Physical Review Letters and a longer Regular Article with more detail to Physical Review B. At Physical Review B, authors can jointly submit a Letter and a Regular Article. In all cases, the longer article should present considerably more (or different) information than contained in the abbreviated publication, and it should lead to a substantially improved understanding of the subject. Some duplication of figures, tables, and text material will often be appropriate, but should be limited and must be properly referenced.
The editors coordinate the handling of Joint Submissions, which usually means that they will be reviewed by one or more of the same referees. (See Editorial Supplemental Material or Joint Submission?) If accepted, publication of the two papers will usually also be coordinated. If only one of the papers is accepted for publication, the editors will advise the authors on how to proceed. Authors may, for example, be offered the opportunity to combine the two manuscripts into a single one, or to transfer the short manuscript to a different Physical Review journal as a separate publication.
To ensure your papers are handled as Joint Submissions, please clearly indicate your intention in the Cover Letter of all the relevant submissions.
The cover letter is an opportunity to explain why the manuscript is appropriate for the journal. It should include the following:
Physical Review B does not require additional materials beyond what is mentioned above.
All Physical Review journals follow the single-anonymized peer review procedures outlined in the Editorial Policies and Practices.
These standard tips will help you respond effectively to a referee report.
When resubmitting your paper in response to a positive editorial invitation, check the following to ensure your paper can be quickly prepared for publication if it’s accepted.
Resubmitting your article as soon as possible ensures the timely sharing of your results. The recommended time frame for submission is three to four weeks, but articles requiring more extensive revisions may take longer.
The Physical Review portfolio provides many publishing options and welcomes the transfer of a manuscript between journals. If a manuscript is not suitable for publication at a given Physical Review journal, the editors aim to support authors by suggesting another journal or journals, provided a suitable option exists.
To resubmit or transfer your paper, go to the APS Submission Server.
When resubmitting or transferring your paper, please provide the following:
If you are requesting to add or remove an author from the paper, please see the Editorial Policy and Practice on adding or removing authors.
APS partners with external vendors to copyedit and format accepted papers according to the APS Journals Style Guide and in collaboration with the relevant journal’s Editorial Team. This service improves the quality of papers by ensuring they are clear and readable, and that they carry the signature Physical Review brand.
Authors should expect to see proofs of their manuscript with marked changes within approximately two weeks of acceptance. Proofs are sent to the Corresponding Author, who is responsible for coordinating changes with all authors and directing them to the production vendor.
The production process generally requires two rounds of proofs; more rounds may be necessary for lengthy papers or papers that deviate significantly from Physical Review style.
Authors can find the status of their paper on the APS Manuscript Status page. You’ll need your 7-digit Accession Code and the last name of one of the first three authors on the paper.
The Important Notice to Authors provides essential instructions on how to check your proof. Authors should check the following:
Are they all present, in the correct order, and spelled correctly?
Do the links go to the correct records? To avoid delays, APS does not add ORCIDs to papers after the first set of proofs is returned.
Review grant numbers for accuracy.
APS converts the original source file to XML, which is used to create the online version and the PDF. This conversion works well for most cases, but please check equations and tables carefully.
Ensure there is a byline footnote giving the email address of the author to whom correspondence should be addressed (Contact author: [email protected]).
The journals offer a variety of ways to correct the scientific record after publication, including Corrections and Author Name Changes. Visit the Post Publication section of the Policies and Practices for details.
APS helps authors promote their work to peers in the research community and to the general public.
To ensure your paper is considered for promotion, consider sending a plain-text, nontechnical summary to explain your results and why they are of interest. See Guidelines for writing and submitting a summary.
The Physical Review B editors select papers as Editors’ Suggestions to direct readers to interesting, important, and well-written articles in areas of research beyond their usual interests. Papers selected for Editors’ Suggestions benefit from extra promotion on the main journal website, on social media, and in email alerts.
The Physical Review B editors regularly feature Letters, Editors’ Suggestions and top downloads on X (formerly known as Twitter) @PhysRevB.
Physics Magazine provides daily news and commentary about a selection of papers from the Physical Review collection, including those published in Physical Review B.
APS issues a weekly tip sheet for reporters that highlights upcoming newsworthy research from the Physical Review journals. Unless otherwise noted, papers submitted to the Physical Review journals are not embargoed. Visit this information page about the APS Press Office to find out more about the tip sheet and the APS Embargo Policy.
The Physical Review journals provide authors with an online, web-based interface, SciPris™, to pay for various author charges, including article publication charges, charges for color figures, and reprints. Upon acceptance, authors will receive a unique link to the SciPris™ platform.
For more information about APCs in the hybrid and fully open-access Physical Review journals, see APC Pricing.
Color figures are free for the online version of any article. Authors may also elect to pay to have color figures in print for Physical Review B.
Reprints are available from Physical Review B. Authors can use SciPris™ to order reprints and obtain associated prices. For authors’ convenience and to minimize delay, the SciPris™ platform accepts payment by major credit card. For those who require invoices to make payment, the system offers this option as well. Please note that reprints are created and mailed after the journal issue has been printed.