New Journal Citation Reports Support Physical Review Journals’ Leading Position

June 30, 2023

The Physical Review journals published by the American Physical Society (APS) remain among the most trusted, cited, impactful and influential publications in physics, according to the 2022 Journal Citation Reports released this week by Clarivate Analytics.

Clarivate’s annual report assesses the impact and reach of more than 21,500 high-quality academic journals from across more than 250 research disciplines. APS journals held leading positions in a number of categories.

Physical Review Letters (PRL), the APS flagship publication that has published cutting-edge physics research for the last 65 years, leads the way as the most-cited journal in physics and the 8th-most cited journal in science overall. On another key measure, called the Normalized Eigenfactor, PRL ranks as the most influential physics journal in the world, and #15 among all journals across all categories.

Reviews of Modern Physics, the world’s premier physics review journal established in 1929, maintains its #1 rank as the highest-impact journal among all titles in the Physics, Multidisciplinary category, with a Journal Impact Factor of 44.1.

APS has also responded thoughtfully to the scientific community’s growing need for high-quality, open access titles, in support of open research. Among fully open-access publications in the Physics, Multidisciplinary category, the top two by impact factor are APS’s Physical Review X (12.5) and PRX Quantum (9.7). PRX Quantum also ranks as the top primary research journal in Quantum Science & Technology. The fully open access Physical Review Research, which has published more than 5,300 articles since its launch in 2019, received its first-ever impact factor (4.2).

Five additional physics titles published by APS — Physical Review A, B, C, D and E — all sit within the top 10% of publications in their respective categories when ranked by multiple metrics, including Total Articles, Total Citations, and Eigenfactor. Physical Review Applied, Physical Review Fluids and Physical Review Materials each ranked among the top 20% largest (Total Articles) and top 15% most influential (Eigenfactor) in their respective categories.

Physical Review Physics Education Research, the only APS publication indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index as well as the Science Citation Index Expanded received its highest-ever Journal Impact Factor (3.1). Physical Review Accelerators and Beams, which this year celebrates 25 years of publication, was one of the first open access journals in physics, and is one of science’s longest running Diamond Open Access journals. It received an impact factor of 1.7.

APS is grateful to the countless authors, readers, referees, editors, and staff members who have supported the journals and contributed to these achievements.