At the beginning of 2021, Physical Review A introduced the Letter article type, which replaced so-called Rapid Communications. The new Letters section has been well received by the community: 50% more Letters were submitted in 2021 compared with Rapid Communications in 2019, but only 30% more Letters were published. These numbers reflect both the attractiveness and high standards of PRA Letters, and we are taking further measures to enhance the Letter format.
Letters are meant for particularly important results that are accessible in a short format. As such, they should receive priority handling not only during the review process but also, if accepted, postpublication. To this end, we are now highlighting Letters on the journal homepage with a captivating image and a brief blurb summarizing the main advance reported in the paper, as we do for Editors’ Suggestions. Moreover, there is now a separate tab on the journal’s website that lists all recently published Letters. Finally, we are highlighting recently accepted Letters via the journal’s social media feed. We have, in fact, been taking these measures for the past few months already without a formal announcement. Our aim is to give these articles the enhanced visibility that they deserve and thereby help authors disseminate their important results as widely as possible.
At the same time, we also wish to make Letters as useful and as easily accessible as possible for readers. Given the overwhelming number of research articles appearing, a concise description of the PRA Letter’s content is crucial to help readers recognize its relevance for their own research. Hence, we ask authors to write abstracts according to a specific structure. The purpose of this structure is to use a small number of sentences to quickly convey the idea, results, and context of the Letter. Specifically, the structure is the following one:
- A brief statement (one or two sentences) stating the problem addressed in the paper. (E.g., “We study …”)
- One sentence summarizing the main finding. (“We find …”)
- Two or three sentences summarizing what is being done in the paper. (“We develop …”)
- One sentence putting the result in a broader context and/or giving an outlook. (“The result may …”)
As an example, here is a mock abstract that would be suitable (in style) for a PRA Letter:
“We consider the role that abstracts play in effectively disseminating information to a reader. We find that structured abstracts facilitate information transfer and substantially increase the likelihood that a paper will be read. By simply rewriting the abstract of an otherwise identical paper, we achieved higher numbers of downloads and citations when following the fate of a paper over two years. Increased attention by the media was found as well, as measured by the number of news stories and mentions on social media. We expect that, in the future, all PRA authors will make use of suitably structured abstracts.”
We hope these enhancements will brighten your PRA Letter experience, and we welcome your feedback.
Jan Michael Rost and Thomas Pattard for The Editors
Published 4 January 2023
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.107.010001