Physical Review C
Physical Review C is a trusted journal for high-quality, significant developments in nuclear physics.
The Home of Nuclear Physics
Established in 1970, PRC is a trusted, essential resource for nuclear physics researchers, nuclear data aggregators and evaluators, and others who use nuclear science research results. PRC provides a collegial and proactive environment for researchers looking to publish in APS’s Physical Review family of journals. PRC coordinates with other members of APS’s Physical Review of journals to serve new subspecialties as they develop.
PRC publishes detailed research articles as well as Letters, which are short accessible papers of particular importance. Whereas Letters are length-restricted, the journal has a flexible approach to article lengths and welcomes submission of longer papers that provide depth and authority in their subject areas.
By Physicists, For Physicists
Like all of the journals in the Physical Review family, PRC is shaped by researchers to serve the research community. This ensures that its mission, standards, and policies prioritize the needs of researchers and the broader scientific community; this commitment is reinforced by APS’s promise as a founding member of the Purpose-Led Publishing coalition.
PRC covers experimental and theoretical results in all aspects of nuclear physics, including:
- Nucleon-nucleon interaction, few-body systems
- Nuclear structure
- Nuclear reactions
- Relativistic nuclear collisions
- Hadronic physics and QCD
- Electroweak interaction, symmetries
- Nuclear astrophysics
Submitted manuscripts should meet the following criteria:
- Add to the existing knowledge related to nuclear physics.
- Make a high-quality, significant contribution in a specific research area and generate interest for PRC's readers.
- Represent an authoritative and substantive addition to the body of literature.
At the core of APS's mission is a commitment to meeting the needs of physicists, a community that has been at the leading edge of open access. As a result, APS supports a variety of sustainable access options:
- Authors can pay an article publication charge (APC) to make accepted manuscripts immediately accessible on publication under a CC-BY (4.0 International) license. In keeping with APS's community orientation, this is the most permissive license available at this time and permits anyone to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work with proper attribution. APCs cover publishing costs and decrease the need for subscription revenue, helping to keep subscription prices low (current APS APCs).
- APS makes its journals free to read at U.S. public libraries and high schools by application on a case-by-case basis. Contact publisher@aps.org for more information.
- APS is a founding member of CHORUS, which enables distributed public access to published research articles reporting on U.S. federal government funded research.
- SCOAP3: As of 2018, PRC is part of the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics. All high-energy physics articles published in PRC since January 1, 2018, and that are posted on arXiv under one of the four "hep" primary designations, are made open access under a Creative Commons Attribution license under the auspices of SCOAP3.
- APS offers authors from lower income countries the opportunity to publish Open Access at no cost by automatically offering APC waivers for articles accepted into all Hybrid and Gold Open Access titles. Learn more here.
- APS provides free access to its subscription-based journals content for readers in lower income countries through partnerships with Research4Life and other programs. Learn more here.
Editorial Board
The PRC Editorial Board is a diverse, global group of active, distinguished scientists, selected by editors in consultation with APS units and appointed by the Executive Editor. Board members serve three-year terms. They may be requested by the editors to advise at any stage of the review process and they serve as adjudicators in formal appeals.
Editorial Team
PRC is managed by a professional editorial team of Ph.D. scientists with extensive research experience at major academic institutions and research laboratories around the world. All editorial decisions are based on PRC acceptance criteria.
High Visibility and Impact
PRC authors gain high visibility and achieve broad dissemination of their work in this leading nuclear physics journal. PRC editors bring attention to outstanding research and elucidate its importance through a number of features:
- Structured Abstracts: The journal fully supports structured abstracts for authors to articulate the background, purpose, methods, results, and conclusions of their research.
- Editors’ Suggestions: Selected papers are chosen as Editors’ Suggestions to direct readers to interesting, important, and well-written articles in areas of research beyond their usual interests. They garner, on average, more downloads and citations than other papers published in the journal and are more frequently covered by news outlets.
- Featured in Physics: Editors regularly notify Physics, APS’s daily online news and commentary publication, about important papers, resulting in coverage in the forms of Synopsis, Focus, or Viewpoint.
- Publicity: APS promotes press-worthy papers from its journals to journalists through a weekly Tip Sheet, resulting in frequent coverage in industry publications and the popular press, such as Physics World and Business Insider.
- Indexing: ISI (Science Citation Index®), Scopus, Inspec, Google Scholar
- Follow APS on Social Media:
- X: @PhysRevC
- LinkedIn: @APSPhysics
- Facebook: @APSPhysics
- Instagram: @APSPhysics
- WeChat: @APSPhysics
Editorial and Publishing Policies
All journals published by APS follow a common set of Editorial Policies and Practices, which cover Editorial Oversight and Decision Making, Authorship, Submissions, Resubmissions, and Transfers, Peer Review, Ethics and Research Integrity, Post Publication, and Open Access and Publications Rights.
PRC is published electronically one article at a time. Articles are identified by volume number and a six-digit article number, for example, Journal 1, XXXXXX (2020).
PRC editors can decide to accelerate the review process for a small number of manuscripts that report particularly important or groundbreaking research.