Open Access Publishing in the Physical Review Journals

The American Physical Society (APS), through the Physical Review journals it publishes, aims to offer open access options that meet the needs of all authors across the research communities it serves.

APS launched its first fully open access journal in 1998. In early 2011 APS transformed some of the largest, most-cited, and most-trusted peer-reviewed, primary research titles in physics into hybrid journals by offering authors an option to publish individual articles open access. Since then it has expanded the options it offers authors by launching a number of new hybrid and gold open access titles, including the highest-impact open access journal in physics, Physical Review X (PRX), and the related family of topical journals, such as PRX Energy and PRX Quantum.

Open access manuscripts are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY), which permits authors and others to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given. Articles are made immediately open access under a CC-BY 4.0 International license in hybrid and fully gold open access journals upon payment of an article publication charge (APC) by the author, or the author’s institution or funder.

APC Pricing

Current APC pricing for publishing gold open access in hybrid and fully open access Physical Review journals is detailed in the following table. Please note that this APC pricing does not apply to authors covered under open access agreements with research institutions and consortia, and that for some titles the APC level varies with article type. More details about promotional pricing and open access agreements appear below the table.

APCs waivers for open access publication are available for submitting authors from many lower and middle income countries. Further information is available on our support page.

Promotional APC Pricing

*PRX Life APC waiver - PRX Life is a new, highly selective, open access journal that aims to publish the most important findings at the interface of physics and biology, as well as to engage with a broader audience of quantitative life scientists. The journal began accepting submissions in March 2023, and article publication charges (APCs) will be waived for manuscripts submitted through the end of 2024. Expanding on the excellence and innovation of Physical Review X (PRX), PRX Life provides a home for and connection between the numerous research communities that make up physics and life sciences. Following the expiration of this promotion, APS intends to align the APC for PRX Life close to the APC pricing of the journals with a similar degree of selectivity (PRX, PRL).

*PRX Energy APC waiver - PRX Energy is a new, highly selective, open access journal covering energy science and technology. The journal began accepting submissions in December 2021, and article publication charges (APCs) will be waived for manuscripts submitted through the end of 2024. Expanding on the excellence and innovation of Physical Review X (PRX), PRX Energy provides a home for and connection between the numerous research communities that make up energy science and technology research. Following the expiration of this promotion, APS intends to align the APC for PRX Energy close to the APC pricing of the journals with a similar degree of selectivity (PRX, PRL).

Open Access Agreements with Research Institutions and Consortia

Open Access and Transformative Agreements

APS piloted its first Transformative Agreements in 2020. These Read and Publish Agreements bundle together two services valued by researchers – read access to all the Physical Review Journals, plus institutional open access publishing – and offset library subscription costs with credits towards open access publishing. APS continues to invest in improving the operational infrastructure that supports open access agreements, and is grateful to a number of trusted library partners for their open collaboration and cooperation towards further developing this program in support of increasing high-quality and sustainable open access options for the researchers we collectively serve. Please review the details of these agreements.

SCOAP³

Since January 1, 2018, APS has participated in SCOAP³ (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics) and has now signed an agreement with CERN to continue to include three of its world-leading journals in the third three-year phase of SCOAP³, which commences January 1, 2020. APS is extending its participation in SCOAP³ as a continuance of its commitment to open access, as adopted by APS Council in 2009.

This arrangement means high-energy physics (HEP) articles accepted by Physical Review Letters (PRL), Physical Review C (PRC), and Physical Review D (PRD) will be published open access, under a CC-BY license, and funded by SCOAP³, with no article publication charges (APCs) for authors.

SCOAP³ provides a route for high-energy physics authors to eliminate the financial barriers of disseminating their research in the rapidly expanding open access landscape. The SCOAP³ consortium includes over 3,000 libraries and research institutes. In the conventional model, libraries and other subscribers pay publishers for access to journal articles. Under the SCOAP³ system, the consortium collects funds directly from subscriber institutions and then makes payments to publishers based on the number of articles published as open access papers. This allows high-energy physics papers to be published open access at no direct cost or additional burden to authors.

Which papers are covered by SCOAP³?
* HEP papers covered by SCOAP³ are all those posted on arXiv.org – with a primary category of hep-ex, hep-th, hep-ph, or hep-lat – prior to publication in PRL, PRC, or PRD.
* HEP papers published in the three participating APS journals on or after January 1, 2018 have been published open access under this initiative, even if the manuscript was originally submitted prior to this date.
* Papers may qualify irrespective of the authors’ institutional affiliations or countries of origin.

Which license will be used for SCOAP³ papers?
Papers will be published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license. Authors will not be required to pay the open access Article Publication Charge (APC) fees for their articles as these will be covered centrally by SCOAP³. Authors will need to execute the appropriate right-to-publish agreement.

How are SCOAP³ papers identified after publication?
Papers published under the agreement will be marked as ‘Funded by SCOAP³’ in the license statement on the first page of the paper.

How are SCOAP³ papers treated during the peer-review process?
The peer-review process is independent of whether a paper qualifies for SCOAP³ and is solely based on the scientific merit of the work. Physical Review staff will check arXiv identifiers and verify that papers have an appropriate HEP primary category. Submitting directly from arXiv.org via our Submissions server or providing the arXiv id during the submission process are the preferred methods for conveying a paper’s arXiv id. Papers without an arXiv id which would otherwise likely qualify (based on the content of the paper) will be marked as a SCOAP³ candidate during the peer-review process. Authors will have the opportunity to either supply an arXiv id throughout the peer-review process (all the way through the production proof stage) or to convey their intention not to put the paper on arXiv.org. Candidate papers will be held from final publication until authors explicitly inform us of their choice. Further delays in publication may occur if an author has to redo their right-to-publish agreement because they have changed their mind late in the publication process.