“The Amer­i­can Phys­i­cal Soci­ety (APS) has announced that the inau­gural issue of its new jour­nal – Physics — is now online. David Voss, for­merly a senior edi­tor of Sci­ence, serves as edi­tor of the jour­nal. Physics does not pub­lish orig­i­nal research arti­cles, but short pieces to high­light, explain and dis­cuss impor­tant arti­cles pub­lished in other APS journals.

The jour­nal high­lights excep­tional papers from the Phys­i­cal Review jour­nals. To accom­plish this, Physics fea­tures expert com­men­taries writ­ten by active researchers who are asked to explain the results to physi­cists in other sub­fields. These com­mis­sioned arti­cles are edited for clar­ity and read­abil­ity across fields and are accom­pa­nied by explana­tory illustrations.

Each week, edi­tors from each of the Phys­i­cal Review jour­nals choose papers that merit this treat­ment, aided by ref­eree com­ments and inter­nal dis­cus­sion. The jour­nal fea­tures three kinds of arti­cles – View­points, which are 1000–1500 word essays that focus on a sin­gle Phys­i­cal Review paper or PRL let­ter and put this work into broader con­text; Trends, which are 3000–4000 word review arti­cles that sur­vey a par­tic­u­lar area and look for inter­est­ing devel­op­ments in that field; and Syn­opses, which are 200 word staff-written dis­til­la­tions of inter­est­ing and impor­tant papers each week. In addi­tion, the jour­nal intends to pub­lish selected Let­ters to the Editor.”

Source:  Knowl­edge­s­peak newslet­ter, July 28, 2008