Physical Review Letters

Below you find an overview of the entire set of editorial procedures of this journal. The overview highlights the procedures applied by the journal while also indicating procedures currently not in place at the journal. The procedures presented are based on information submitted by the journal’s representatives. PREP is hence not responsible for any inaccuracies in the below description. For almost all questions, journal editors were able to select multiple answers. In case editorial models are conditional, e.g. on authors’ or reviewers’ choices, multiple answers should be selected, which explains why some journals offer multiple, seemingly incommensurable, models.

The information for this journal was last updated on December 11, 2019.

Timing and selectiveness

At what stage of the publication process does review take place?

Post-publication review	Pre-publication review	No review takes place	Pre-submission review (including registered reports)

What quality criteria does your journal use for peer review?

Methodological rigour and correctness	Anticipated impact (either within or outside of science)	Novelty	Fit with journal's scope	Other

Openness of review

What type of reviewers are included in your journal's peer review process?

Commercial review platforms	Editor-in-chief	Wider community / readers	Editorial committee	External reviewers suggested and selected by editor(s)	External reviewers suggested by authors

To what extent are authors anonimised in your journal's review process?

Author identities are blinded to editor and reviewer	Author identities are blinded to reviewer but known to editor	Author identities are known to editor and reviewer

To what extent are reviewers anonimised in your journal's review process?

Reviewers are anonymous (both to authors and other reviewers as well as to readers of the published manuscript)	Reviewer identities are known to other reviewers of the same manuscript	Reviewer identities are known to the authors	Reviewer identities are known to the readers of the published manuscript

To what extent are review reports accessible?

Review reports are accessible to authors and editors	Review reports are accessible to other reviewers	Review reports are accessible to readers of the published manuscript	Review reports are publicly accessible

To what extent does your journal's review process allow for interaction between reviewers and authors?

No direct interaction between authors and reviewers is facilitated apart from communicating review reports and author responses via editors	Interaction between reviewers is facilitated	Author's responses to review reports are communicated to the reviewer	Interaction between authors and reviewers is facilitated (on top of formal review reports and formal responses to review reports)

Specialisation of review

To what extent is your journal's review process structured?

Structured: Review occurs through mandatory forms or checklists to be filled out by reviewers	Unstructured: reviewers are free to choose how to organise their review and are not presented questions or criteria for judgement	Semi-structured: Reviewers are guided by some (open) questions or are presented several criteria for judgement

To what extent does your journal's review process use specialist statistical review?

Not applicable (statistics does not play a role in my journal's research area)	No special attention is given to statistical review	Incorporated in review (assessing statistics is part of reviewer's and editor's tasks)	Statistical review is performed by an additional, specialist reviewer	Statistics review is performed through automatic computer software

To what extent does your journal accept or use reviews from external sources?

No reviews from external sources are used	Reviews from other (partner) journals accompanying manuscripts rejected elsewhere are used	Reviews from commercial review platforms are used	Reviews performed by the wider community (i.e. not by invited or targeted reviewers) are used (e.g. reviews on public forums)	Other

Technological support in review

What forms of digital tools are used in your journal's review process?

No digital tools are used	Digital tools to check references are used (e.g. to check for references to retracted articles, or references to articles published in predatory journals)	Plagiarism detection software is used	Digital tools to assess validity or consistency of statistics are used	Digital tools to detect image manipulation are used	Other

To what extent does your journal's review process allow for reader commentary after publication of a manuscript?

No direct reader commentary is facilitated	Reader commentary is facilitated on the journal's website	Out-of-channel reader commentary is facilitated (e.g. by providing links to commentary on other platforms such as PubPeer)