Physical Review Physics Education Research

Our reviewers play a pivotal role in ensuring integrity and quality in our publications, and we deeply value the commitments and efforts of every reviewer.

The six new studies present high-quality findings at the intersection of AI, machine learning, and the physical sciences.

The policy allows authors and reviewers to use AI tools and establishes boundaries to preserve human oversight and accountability.

For the first time, we’re offering perpetual rights as an optional enhancement to your APS All subscription. Own the most influential physics research for years to come with Frontlist Perpetual Rights.

Ten high-quality studies by authors from around the world have found a home in the American Physical Society’s new community-driven, open access journal.

APS has selected 156 Outstanding Referees for 2026 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

APS Open Science will provide a community-driven platform that broadens recognition for high-quality physics research across all stages of discovery.

PRX Intelligence will publish high-impact research on artificial intelligence and machine learning that advances the physical sciences.

We recognize that the ongoing U.S. government shutdown is affecting many in the scientific community, including authors and reviewers of the Physical Review journals, by delaying projects, disrupting funding, and creating uncertainty.

Three APS members have received the prize for experiments with a handheld system that revealed quantum physics in action.

High rankings demonstrate the impact, reach, and influence of the American Physical Society’s journals.

The ‘About’ pages for each APS journal have recently been updated with new data from the 2024 Journal Citation Reports (2025, Clarivate), CiteScore (Scopus Elsevier) and SCImago Journal Rank (SCImago). View the metrics of the entire library on the Journal Metrics page.

The American Physical Society proudly announces the launch of The Physics Archive, a comprehensive digital library that covers 120 years of groundbreaking research from the world-renowned Physical Review journals.

We are pleased to announce that Prof. Rachel Scherr has been appointed Associate Editor of Physical Review Physics Education Research.

The American Physical Society has received the leading score among publishers participating in the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³) in the first evaluation of open science practices in scholarly publishing. With high marks in elements like accessibility, data availability, and article metadata, the Society earned a total score of 20.18 out of 25 — almost double that of the next highest scorer.

APS has selected 160 Outstanding Referees for 2025 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

Eric Brewe, the new Chief Editor for Physical Review Physics Education Research, outlines his vision for a growing journal with an increasingly international reach.

APS is delighted to announce that Eric Brewe has been selected as Chief Editor of Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER).

We are excited to announce updates to our journals platform, offering enhanced accessibility features designed to provide a more inclusive experience.

Mike Verostek, Casey W. Miller, and Benjamin M. Zwickl, (Rochester Institute of Technology) “Physics Ph.D. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group.”
Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 20, 010136 (2024)
Moderated by Miranda Gallagher, APS Education Program Manager
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The Physical Review journals would like to congratulate John J. Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton of the University of Toronto for sharing the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. The prize was awarded for “foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.”

The policy requires authors to explain where research data can be found starting Sept. 4.

Dr. Ana Sušac is an Associate Professor in Physics at the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Alongside her brain research studies using neuroimaging methods, she is actively involved in physics education research.

Clarivate Analytics has released the 2023 Journal Citation Reports, which provides journal impact factors and rankings for over 11,000 scholarly journals.

APS has selected 156 Outstanding Referees for 2024 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

Short papers in Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER) were originally intended for articles that either extended a previous work (by the authors or someone else) or were initial results from a larger effort that were interesting enough to merit this type of publication.

Offer includes Journal Access and waived article publication charges to Scientists in 100+ Lower and Middle Income Countries

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increasingly found its way into more and more areas of our lives, including education. This focused collection aims to address opportunities, challenges, and issues around the use of a broad variety of AI tools in physics education and physics education research.

In the year 2025, we will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the formulation and development of quantum theory. The United Nations is working toward a declaration of 2025 as the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQST). In the spring of 2025, Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER) will join the celebration by rolling out a special issue of the journal focused on investigating and improving quantum education.

APS congratulates the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz, and Anne L’Huillier “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of electron dynamics in matter.”

APS Editor in Chief, Randall D. Kamien, discusses the importance and impact of journal reviewers.

It is our pleasure to introduce the first published articles from PRX Life, the American Physical Society’s new interdisciplinary, open-access journal exclusively for quantitative biological research.

Dr. Eric Brewe is a Professor in Physics and Science Education at Drexel University. Much of his research into the teaching and learning of physics at the university level is focused on the Modeling Instruction method. Dr. Brewe publishes frequently in PRPER and has received significant external funding to support his research. He is an APS Fellow and has served as Chair of the APS Education Policy Committee and Chair of the APS Topical Group on Physics Education Research.

The American Physical Society (APS), publisher of the Physical Review journals, is joining more than 20,000 individuals and organizations across 160 countries in a commitment to improve how researchers and their contributions to the scientific record are evaluated. APS is proud to mark the 10th anniversary of the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) by officially signing on to the international initiative.

View an interview with PRX Life Lead Editor Margaret Gardel and Managing Editor Serena Bradde from the 2023 APS March Meeting for more information on the journal.

APS has selected 153 Outstanding Referees for 2023 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

The journal Physical Review Physics Education Research and the Topical Group on Physics Education Research(GPER) are collaborating to host these events on recent, high-impact physics education research.

APS is pleased to announce the launch of the newest Physical Review title, PRX Life. PRX Life will offer scientists from a broad range of disciplines—including physics, biology, chemistry, engineering, and medicine—a high impact, fully open access journal dedicated to publishing outstanding research at all scales of biological organization.

Lead Editor, Charles Henderson, announces PRPER’s development of the Statistical Modeling Review Committee (SMRC) to help support high-quality statistical modeling techniques.

APS congratulates the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when separated. Their results clear the way for new technology based on quantum information.

The American Physical Society (APS), along with AIP Publishing, IOP Publishing (IOPP), and Optica Publishing Group (formerly OSA), surveyed over 3,000 physical science researchers between December 2021 and January 2022 in an effort to understand their perspective on Open Access (OA) publishing. Their responses have been compiled into a report, which will help APS and other publishers better meet the publishing needs of the research community.

APS is now accepting nominations of members, including self-nominations, for the newly restructured role of APS Editor in Chief (EIC).

PRPER Lead Editor, Charles Henderson, and APS Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, discuss the vital importance of offering an inclusive and welcoming environment to the physics community.

APS has selected 146 Outstanding Referees for 2022 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

The American Physical Society (APS) is delighted to announce the appointment of David Scanlon, Professor of Computational Materials Design, University College London, United Kingdom, to the role of Lead Editor of PRX Energy, APS’s new, highly selective, open access journal covering energy science and technology. Professor Scanlon will serve as the inaugural Lead Editor of the journal, which will open for submissions December 7, 2021 and offer an introductory promotion in which all article publication charges (APCs) will be paid by APS through the end of 2022.

Saalih Allie is a Professor at the University of Cape Town, where he has held joint positions in the Department of Physics and the Academic Development Programme since 1986. He holds a PhD in experimental nuclear physics from the University of Cape Town and is presently Co-Director of the National Astrophysics and Space Science Programme (NASSP) in South Africa.

Physics is an experimental science. Instructional laboratories where students conduct experiments, analyze data, arrive at conclusions, and communicate findings have been around for over a century. Every physics department has labs of different levels: from introductory to advanced, for majors and nonmajors, with real equipment or virtual.

APS congratulates the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming” and the other half to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”

Professor Parisi has authored several papers with Physical Review journals. A selection of relevant papers from Physical Review Letters and Reviews in Modern Physics have been made free-to-read.

Patrick Charbonneau, Eric I. Corwin, Giorgio Parisi, and Francesco Zamponi, Universal Microstructure and Mechanical Stability of Jammed Packings, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 205501 (2012).

M. Mézard, G. Parisi, N. Sourlas, G. Toulouse, and M. Virasoro, Nature of the Spin-Glass Phase, Phys. Rev. Lett. 52, 1156 (1984).

G. Parisi, Infinite Number of Order Parameters for Spin-Glasses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1754 (1979).

Paolo Rissone, Eric I. Corwin, and Giorgio Parisi, Long-Range Anomalous Decay of the Correlation in Jammed Packings, Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 038001 (2021).

Giorgio Parisi and Francesco Zamponi, Mean-field theory of hard sphere glasses and jamming, Rev. Mod. Phys. 82, 789 (2010).

Giorgio Parisi, Order Parameter for Spin-Glasses, Phys. Rev. Lett. 50, 1946 (1983).

The American Physical Society (APS) today released the details of its name change policy for the Physical Review journals. The policy is intended to make the world’s leading physics journals more inclusive and ensure authors retain ownership of prior work published under a different name.

Physics Education Research (PER) uses various research methods classified under qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods. These approaches help researchers understand physics education phenomena and advance our efforts to produce better PER. Over time, research questions and contexts have evolved, and so have our methods. We understand it has come the time for PER scholars to examine qualitative methods in our field critically. Therefore, we urge you to contribute to the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER.

APS has selected 151 Outstanding Referees for 2021 who have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

Starting January 1, 2021, the Rapid Communications article type will be renamed to Letters. With this change, all eight Physical Review journals that had previously classified articles of the type “Rapid Communications” will adopt the practice of Physical Review Applied and now publish such articles as Letters.

APS Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, discusses a new opportunity for communicating authors to include their pronouns together with their contact email in order to promote a more respectful, inclusive, and equitable environment.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the recipients of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, which has been awarded for discoveries about black holes, one of the most exotic phenomena in the universe. This year’s prize is awarded to Roger Penrose (University of Oxford), Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and University of California, Berkeley), and Andrea Ghez (University of California, Los Angeles).

APS and the Max Planck Gesellschaft (MPG) have finalized the terms of a strategic partnership that allows MPG authors to easily publish open access in all hybrid and gold Physical Review journals at no direct cost to authors. At the center of the collaboration is APS’s first “read and publish” pilot, covering the calendar year 2020, and building upon the long-standing relationship between APS and the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL).

In the following special collection from Physical Review Physics Education Research, authors examine and highlight racial diversity, specifically how Black physicists and people of color navigate within the physics community at large.

APS has selected 147 Outstanding Referees for 2020 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

APS congratulates the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology”, and Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.” Read more in this update from APS News.

Articles appearing in this special collection highlight the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to quantitative methods. Editorial

APS has selected 143 Outstanding Referees for 2019 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

The first update to REVTeX since 2010 is now available. REVTeX 4.2 includes bug fixes, improved functionality, and support for more societies and journals. For more information, please visit the REVTeX home page.

APS congratulates the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics recipients Arthur Ashkin “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems,” and Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”

PhySH, APS’s physics classification scheme, is now publicly available under a Creative Commons CC0 license. Created to provide a fully open, high-quality classification scheme for the entire physics community, PhySH groups concepts into a flexible hierarchy that organizes content by topics.

Do laboratory experiments help students learn concepts? Why do so few women choose to major in physics? What is the most important skill for a high school physics teacher to develop?

Articles appearing in this special collection highlight the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to astronomy education research. Editorial

Guest Editors Benedikt W. Harrer, Eleanor C. Sayre, and Leslie Atkins Elliott
Articles appearing in this special collection will highlight the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to curriculum development in PER.

As a service to the community, APS has made “Physics Physique физика” freely available online. This small journal published fewer than 100 articles between 1964-1968 and includes papers by many notable physicists, including J. S. Bell’s paper “On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox.”

APS has selected 147 Outstanding Referees for 2018 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts submitted to the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

The Physical Review journals and Reviews of Modern Physics now make Corrections of minor errors in published papers.

Publisher Matthew Salter and Editor in Chief, Michael Thoennessen, kick off the 125th anniversary of The Physical Review and 25th anniversary of Physical Review E.

APS congratulates Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish, and Kip S. Thorne for winning the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”
APS News Article

On July 18, 2017, APS, along with the Institute of Physics Publishing (IOPP), has taken an important step towards working more closely with the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) system of unique identifiers by signing the ORCID open letter requiring the collection of ORCID iDs in their publishing processes.

Starting on July 11, APS will begin participating in the Initiative for Open Citations (I4OC), a collaboration among scholarly publishers to make information freely available about what papers are cited by a given journal article. This information had always been available to those subscribing to the Physical Review journals, but now the citation data will be open to all.

Nuclear physicist Michael Thoennessen has been selected to become APS Editor in Chief at the end of August 2017. Currently an Associate Director of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University (MSU) in Lansing, Michigan, and University Distinguished Professor of Physics at MSU, he was appointed following a vote of the APS Board of Directors on June 16.

Guest Editors Marcos D. Caballero, Alexis V. Knaub, and John M. Aiken
Articles appearing in this special collection will highlight the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to quantitative methods in PER.

After a thoughtful, deliberative process involving an examination of the alignment of the values of APS with the goals of the March for Science on April 22 in Washington, D.C., the APS Council Steering Committee, on behalf of the Council of Representatives, unanimously voted to endorse the march.

The journals of the American Physical Society welcome and will continue to welcome manuscripts from all countries, with publication based on scientific merit alone.

APS has selected 150 Outstanding Referees for 2017 that have demonstrated exceptional work in the assessment of manuscripts published in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees is available online.

Rachel Scherr discusses gender-related research in Physical Review Physics Education Research, from 2005 to the present.

APS congratulates David J. Thouless, F. Duncan M. Haldane, and J. Michael Kosterlitz for winning the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theoretical discoveries using topological concepts.

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Guest Editors Janelle M. Bailey and Julia D. Plummer
Articles appearing in this special collection will highlight the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to astronomy education research.

Guest Editors Eric Brewe and Vashti Sawtelle
A collection of articles that highlights the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to gender in physics.

Pierre Meystre of the University of Arizona has been appointed Editor in Chief of the Physical Review research journals.

We are saddened by the passing on April 16 of our dear colleague Peter Adams, one of the founders of the Physical Review family of journals. We offer our heartfelt condolences to his family.

APS has selected 146 Outstanding Referees for 2016 that have been exceptionally helpful in assessing manuscripts for publication in the Physical Review journals. A full list of the Outstanding Referees for 2016 is available online.

Guest Editors Rachel E. Scherr and MacKenzie R. Stetzer
A collection of articles that highlights the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to upper-division physics courses.

Charles Henderson announces that as of January 1, 2016, the name of Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research (PRST-PER) was changed to Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER).

Beginning January 1, 2016, the names of Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams (PRST-AB) will change to Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (PRAB), and Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research (PRST-PER) will change to Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER).

Asia-Pacific region publishing manager for UK Institute of Physics to join top management staff of the American Physical Society.

APS congratulates Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald for winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass. Their prize-winning research is free to read in Physical Review Letters.

Guest Editors Michael E. Loverude and Bradley S. Ambrose
A collection of articles that highlights the current state of the field of physics education research as it relates to upper-division physics courses.

Robert J. Beichner discusses the origins and role of Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research in supporting the movement of PER towards acceptance as a legitimate research area for physicists.

Gene Sprouse, Editor in Chief of the APS research journals since March 2007, has stepped down from the position as of April 28, 2015. Read more in APS News.

APS Editor in Chief Gene Sprouse discusses the new role of Physical Review X as APS's highly selective and broadly accessible journal, that publishes a small number of key papers from all areas of physics in APS's nonprofit, science-first publishing tradition.

The American Physical Society congratulates the 2014 Nobel Prize Winners in Physics and Chemistry.

Physics

The physics laureates Isamu Akasaki (Meijo University and Nagoya University), Hiroshi Amano (Nagoya University), and Shuji Nakamura (University of California, Santa Barbara) have been recognized for their work that led to the invention of the blue light-emitting diode, a fundamental stepping stone towards the realization of new environmentally friendly and energy efficient light sources.

Chemistry

The chemistry laureates Eric Bertzig (Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Stefan W. Hell (Max Planck Institute and German Cancer Research Center), and William E. Moerner (Stanford Univerisity) have been recognized for their work in improving the resolution of optical microscopy, in particular the development of a super-resolved fluorescence microscope.

“It’s a great year for optics,” said Pierre Meystre (University of Arizona Regents’ Professor of Physics and Optical Sciences, Physical Review Letters Lead Editor), “with blue LEDs winning the Physics Nobel yesterday and fluorescence microscopy winning the Chemistry prize today. It shows that wonderful things are happening in optics from saving enormous amounts of energy with efficient lighting to helping with life-saving medical advances that rely on super-resolution imaging. They are completely different technologies, but both light-based, and next year is the International Year of Light, so the timing couldn’t be better.”

Many remarkable papers from these scientists contributed to this development. These include Moerner’s seminal 1989 work on optical detection and spectroscopy of single molecules in a solid, which was published in Physical Review Letters. This paper is now freely available on our website.

Read More from APS:

• Physics APS News Update
• Chemistry APS News Update
• APS Press Release for Chemistry Prize
• W. E. Moerner and L. Kador, Phys. Rev. Lett. 62, 2535 (1989)

Nobel Press Releases:

• Physics
• Chemistry

The American Physical Society has launched full-text HTML versions of more than 200,000 articles throughout the APS journal collection from as early as 2003. Users can now access APS content using high-quality navigation features and mobile-friendly math displays across a range of devices.