Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams (PRST-AB) is published by the American Physical Society (APS), the Council of which has the final responsibility for the journal. The Publications Oversight Committee of the APS and the Editor-in-Chief possess delegated responsibility for overall policy matters concerning all APS journals. The Editor of PRST-AB is responsible for the scientific content and editorial matters relating to the journal.
Editorial policy is guided by the following statement adopted in April, 1995 by the Council of the APS:
It is the policy of the American Physical Society that the Physical Review accept for publication those manuscripts that significantly advance physics and have been found to be scientifically sound, important to the field, and in satisfactory form. The Society will implement this policy as fairly and efficiently as possible and without regard to national boundaries.
The European Physical Society Accelerators Group and the American Physical Society Division of Physics of Beams form the Affiliated Professional Groups. They share the responsibility for the health and vitality of Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams by providing advice and encouraging scholarly publication in accelerator science and technology. PRST-AB has an Editorial Board whose members are appointed for three-year terms by the Editor-in-Chief upon recommendation of the Editor after consultation with the Affiliated Professional Groups. Board members play an important role in the editorial management of the journal. They lend advice on editorial policy and on specific papers for which special assistance is needed, participate in the formal appeals process (see section on Author Appeals), and give input on the selection of referees and the identification of new referees.
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams is completely electronic with all steps including submission, refereeing, and publication being done electronically. While this places some restrictions on the acceptable forms of submission, it brings substantial advantages including free, unrestricted distribution, easy use of enhancements such as color figures, movies, etc., and hypertext links to references.
Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams deals with all aspects of accelerator science and technology. Papers in PRST-AB are categorized into the following subsections:
If a manuscript submitted to PRST-AB is on a topic not within its purview, but may be suitable for another Physical Review journal, the Editors will transfer the paper to the appropriate journal and inform the author(s) of that transfer.
CONTENT OF ARTICLES
Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams publishes papers that either
Excluding review articles, the Physical Review and Physical Review Letters publish new results. Thus, prior publication of the same results generally will preclude consideration of a later paper.
Confirmation of previously published results of unusual importance can be considered as new, as can significant null results. In general, authors should keep review material to a minimum. Even so, some review and reprise of past work is appropriate if the paper can be made more understandable and self-contained thereby.
Readers benefit from complete referencing, which is necessary to place any work in the context of the current state of research. Authors should therefore make every effort to ensure that their citations of previously published work are comprehensive at the time of submission. This includes references to books and to published conference proceedings that contain more than abstracts. Authors should also add to the references any works published during the course of the review process.
It may also be necessary for authors to cite unpublished work, such as e-prints, peprints, internal reports, or results which have been reported only orally at meetings (even though an abstract may have been published). Unpublished work that appears during the review process may require citation as well. Unpublished work has not been fully vetted by the community, and considerable judgment on the part of the Editor will be employed in determining the need to cite such work.
Papers that describe proposed experiments fall into a special category. For such papers to be acceptable, the experiments must be demonstrated to be novel and feasible. It is the authors' responsibility to show that their proposal is likely to stimulate research that might not otherwise be undertaken.
Material previously published in an abbreviated form (in a Letters journal, as a Rapid Communication, or in a conference proceedings) may provide a useful basis for a more detailed article in the Physical Review. Such an article should present considerably more information and lead to a substantially improved understanding of the subject. Reproduction of figures, tables, and text material that have been published previously should be kept to a minimum and must be properly referenced. In order to reproduce figures, tables, etc., from another journal, authors must show that they have complied with the copyright requirements of the publisher of the other journal. Publication of material in a thesis does not preclude publication of appropriate parts of that material in the Physical Review.
Review articles should review active areas of research in a form that is useful to both practitioners and people entering the field. Authors are asked to give considerable attention to the presentation of their material, making introductions accessible to intermediate graduate students and readers from other fields. The body of each paper should be economically and thoughtfully organized.
For the practitioner, a review should present the current status of a given topic. In addition to providing a historical background and a literature survey, an ideal review should transcend a mere compilation of previous work. It should examine critically the progress on the topic, identifying the most successful methods and pointing out areas for future development.
Reviews in PRST-AB should cover topics of particular interest to the PRST-AB readership. Authors should consider submitting articles that a broader audience would find valuable to Reviews of Modern Physics.
In all cases, papers should be clearly written in good scientific English, in a style consistent with that of the journal (see General Information for Contributors). New terminology should be introduced only when clearly needed and appropriate, and it should not be introduced in titles. Excessive use of acronyms is discouraged.
The appropriate length of an article depends on the information presented, and there is no length limit. To enhance conciseness, authors may refer to their own internal reports or theses that contain more detail than the article, and to enhance readability some material, especially long tables, may best be placed in appendices.
Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams publishes Comments and Errata in addition to regular articles.
Comments are publications that criticize or correct papers of other authors previously published in PRST-AB. Each Comment should contain an abstract and should state clearly the paper to which it refers. To be considered for publication, a Comment must be written in a collegial tone and must be pertinent and without egregious errors. A Reply to a Comment must also conform to these requirements. Editorial procedures for processing Comments are described in the following section. When a Comment is published, bidirectional links are created connecting the Comment, the article it comments on, and the Reply if any, so that users accessing any of these documents can easily access the others.
Errata are notices of errors or omissions in papers previously published in PRST-AB. Errata should be as brief as possible. An Erratum should contain a short statement of the correction(s) and, where appropriate, a description of any effects on the conclusions of the paper. When an Erratum is published, bidirectional links are created connecting the article and the Erratum.
EDITORIAL PROCEDURES
The following is a description of the usual procedure, but there can be exceptions to almost all the matters discussed below.
Usually, one referee is selected by the Editor for each manuscript, and papers are accepted for publication based on favorable recommendations by the referee(s). Referee reports are advisory to the Editor, but are generally transmitted by the Editor to the authors, and so should be written in a collegial manner. The Editor may withhold or edit these reports for cause.
Any resubmittal should be accompanied by a summary of changes made, and a brief response to all recommendations and criticisms. This material will normally be forwarded to reviewers, and so should be written in a collegial manner. Remarks that authors wish to address solely to the Editors should be clearly identified and separated from the summary and response. Authors should not send a version of the manuscript marked to show the changes, as this can lead to confusion and delay in processing.
A manuscript may be sent to additional referees if warranted, either by request of the authors or by editorial decision. In most cases the new referee will be provided with previous correspondence on the manuscript, but not with the identity of the previous referee(s). Editorial Board members, however, may receive this information.
There are some exceptions to the stated acceptance criterion above:
Authors should state whether the paper they submit has been previously considered for publication in any of the APS journals (Physical Review Letters, other Physical Review journals, or Reviews of Modern Physics) and supply the code number assigned by that journal. They should also provide information about other recent relevant unpublished work of theirs (e.g., for a paper under consideration by an APS journal, supply the code number; for one submitted to another journal, provide the title; for a paper deposited on an e-print server, supply the e-print number).
When a manuscript has several authors, one of them, the corresponding author, should be designated to receive and respond to correspondence from the Editor. This designation can be changed upon notification of the Editor. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to represent all those involved with the work reported.
By submitting the manuscript, the corresponding author certifies:
Authors may not present data and other results obtained by others as if they were their own. Nor may authors incorporate without attribution texts from the works of another author, even when summarizing past results or background material. If a direct quotation is appropriate, the quotation should be clearly indicated as such and the original source should be properly cited. Papers that have been found to be in violation of this rule will be rejected. In such cases, resubmission of the manuscript, even with the plagiarized text removed, is not ordinarily allowed. However, the Editor may allow exceptions to this policy if warranted by special circumstances.
Authors may request that particular individuals not be chosen as referees. Such requests are usually honored, although it is customary to give authors whose work is criticized in a manuscript an opportunity to respond to the criticism. Authors are welcome to submit a list of experts whom they consider especially suited to referee their paper. Such a list is particularly useful when a manuscript treats a highly specialized subject on which papers are infrequently published. The Editors, however, are not constrained to select a referee from that list.
In some circumstances information about a manuscript considered by Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams and subsequently submitted to another journal may be provided to the editor of that journal. Such information might include the comments and identities of referees.
The reviewing procedure for Comments, papers that criticize others' work, is usually as follows:
Authors may appeal a rejection of their paper by the Editor. In the case of a formal appeal, the paper and all relevant information, including the identities of the referees, will be sent to a member of the Editorial Board. The Board member may review the case on the existing record or may seek additional expert opinion. The Board member will present an advisory opinion to the Editor, which will be sent to the authors and/or referees with the Board member's name.
If a Board member has provided a referee report on a paper prior to appeal, another Board member must review the paper on appeal. Authors may suggest those Board members they feel are appropriate (or not appropriate) to conduct the review, but the Editor is not bound by such suggestions. If there is no suitable Board member available, the Editor may appoint an appropriate scientist to consider a paper under appeal as an ad hoc Board member.
The author of a paper that has been rejected subsequent to an Editorial Board review may request that the case be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief of the APS. This request should be addressed to the Editor, who will forward the entire file to the Editor-in-Chief. Such an appeal must be based on the fairness of the procedures followed, and must not be a request for another scientific review. The question to be answered in this review is: Did the paper receive a fair hearing? The decision of the Editor-in-Chief concludes the consideration of the manuscript by the American Physical Society.
RECEIPT DATES
Each paper, when published, carries a receipt date indicating when the manuscript was first received by the Editor of Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams.
If authors make substantive changes in a manuscript or if they hold it for an unusually long time after it has been returned to them with a referee's report, the paper will be given a "revised manuscript receipt date." In such cases, the authors may be required to revise references to include material published since the original submission of the manuscript. In cases of especially lengthy delays the original paper is considered withdrawn, and the resubmitted version is considered to be a new paper and is given a new receipt date.
Papers transferred from Physical Review Letters or other Physical Review journals that are accepted without further review and are not delayed unduly by the authors will retain the original receipt date. In other cases a new receipt date, which is the date of transfer, will generally be given. However, the authors may request that the original receipt date be retained.
AUTHOR INQUIRIES
The Author Status Inquiry System provides information to authors regarding the status of their manuscripts automatically via electronic mail or the World Wide Web.
In those cases when clarification of the information from the Author Status Inquiry System is needed, send an electronic mail message to prstab@aps.org (with subject line, for example, Status ZF1234 Jones).
The Editor welcomes suggestions from authors and referees regarding improvements in editorial and refereeing procedures.
The Editor
Physical
Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams