PRL Previous News

• 7 January 2002: All 1998 content has been moved into PROLA (Physical Review Online Archives). Scitation houses the current year of journal content plus the previous three years.

• 12 June 2001: Physical Review Letters has switched to a new production mode in which the journal is published electronically one article at a time, an article appearing soon after the page proofs are ready. In making this change, a new citation method has been adopted. It is based on volume and article number, beginning with articles in Volume 87 Issue 1 (2 July 2001). Each article is published in its final form, including the final bibliographic citation. See announcement.

• 14 May 2001: PROLA is now complete and covers all APS material from1893-1997.

• 8 January 2001: All volumes prior to 1998 have been moved into PROLA (Physical Review Online Archives). PROLA has undergone a rewrite and now has the same features as all of the APS journals on Scitation. New material is being added on an ongoing basis. The archive is expected to go back to 1893 by the summer of 2001.

• 13 September 2000: Links to ISI's Web of Science service are now enabled in all abstracts. Detailed information is available in the Online Help.

• 22 May 2000: References to Elsevier Science journals are now linked to ScienceDirect (Elsevier's online journal collection). Access to the ScienceDirect abstract is free for subscribers to this journal. Subscribers to ScienceDirect may also access the full text. More information is available in the Online Help.

• 11 January 2000: Subscribers are now able to search across all Physical Review content in Scitation. Detailed information is available in the Online Help.

• 29 September 1999: Abstract view URLs now appear below the abstract. These can be cut and pasted and used subsequently as a means to access the abstract directly.

• 6 August 1999:

  • In both the HTML tables of contents and the abstracts hyperlinked to it, mathematical expressions, symbols, diacritical marks, and other entities are now rendered as characters using inline images. Alternate text will still be used in the "alt tags" associated with each image for users that have their browsers configured to suppress display of images. The Online Help contains more information.

  • References that link to an article in an online journal will now be linked via the text of the citation instead of through a separate [online] tag. This applies to reference sections, See Also lists, and Citing Articles lists. The Online Help contains more information on reference linking.

• 19 July 1999: Holding time for Article Collections has been extended from 30 to 90 days. A collection will be stored for 90 days without user access. If the collection has not been accessed for 90 days it will be deleted. Online Help contains more information.

• 8 July 1999: The See Also list, which provides links from an abstract to other related papers in the journal, has been expanded to include links between Sequels and Addenda and their original papers. The Online Help contains more information on related-paper links.

• 16 June 1999: The Volume/Page Lookup Box (VPLUB), has been added to the journal entry page and search related pages for added convenience. VPLUB allows users to locate a specific article by volume and first page number.

• 2 June 1999: Because of problems with inconsistent browser behavior, clicking on a reference link will no longer initiate the launch of a second "child" window. Instead, the new page will load into the current browser window. A second browser window can be launched manually if preferred. For easier bookmarking and navigation, the title of the article being displayed is shown in the browser window title bar.

• 15 March 1999: Reference linking in this journal has been extended to include journals published by EDP Sciences (formerly Les Éditions de Physique). The Online Help contains more information on EDPS links in particular and on and on reference linking in general.

• 7 December 1998:

  • Support for browsers that either (a) do not natively support cookies, or (b) access this journal with cookie support disabled has been removed from the system. Users can freely navigate content above this journal's fee/free line with either cookie-challenged clients or with cookie acceptance disabled, but authentication for content below the line (references, full text, searching) requires that browsers be configured to accept cookies. More information can be found in the Online Help.

  • The reference- and related-paper-linking features of this journal have been upgraded. See Reference Sections and Reference Linking in Abstracts and Related-Paper ("See Also") Citations and Links in Abstracts, respectively, for more details regarding the changes.

  • A new Author Search Interface has been added, which will allow users to search more effectively using initials.

  • Additional enhancements have been made to the intrajournal navigation system and are fully described in the Online Help.

  • All PostScript files are now delivered as compressed Level 2 PostScript, which are "gzipped" files. Compressed PostScript allows for faster file downloads, and gzipped files can be easily decompressed with file utilities that are freely available for all computer platforms. More information on working with gzipped PostScript is available in the Online Help.

• 5 October 1998: A Volume/Page Lookup Box (VPLUB) has been added to the "Available Volumes" list which allows users to locate a specific full-text article according to the volume and first page number of an article.

• 16 September 1998: A link to the Physical Review Online Archives (PROLA) has been added to the "Online" section of the journal entry page. This searchable archive contains a (nearly) complete electronic copy of The Physical Review from 1985 through 1996.

• 16 September 1998: An easy-to-remember URL has been enabled to facilitate access to the graphical entry page of this journal:

  http://prl.aps.org/

  The original URL, http://scitation.aip.org/prl/ will continue to remain active as well.

• 30 July 1998: Software changes have been installed to aid in the future enhancement of this journal. The immediate implications of this are as follows:
  • Your bookmarks or favorites for the HTML ToC's (tables of contents) and volume/issue lists must be updated. If you use an old bookmark or favorite link to one of these pages, you will be asked to access the journal directly and reset your bookmark(s) or favorite(s) accordingly.

  • HTML math is now available in the article titles in the HTML ToC's. For more information about HTML rendering of complex mathematical expressions, please see the help file "HTML Limitations: Math; Author Affiliations".

• 8 April 1998: Some additional functions have been added to PRL (please click on the feature name for more information):
  
  
  • Article Collection: The "Article Collection" feature allows users to add articles of interest from any HTML Table of Contents or abstract-view page, or from a Search Results page (subscribers only). Selected titles are added to a list or "collection" that includes link to the abstract and full text (which can be viewed or downloaded). The collection is accessible indefinitely, as long as it is accessed at least once every month (collections that are not accessed at least once every month are erased). JavaScript support must be enabled to take full advantage of this feature.

  • DocumentStore: AIP's online document delivery service allows users to purchase articles for which they do not have subscription rights. Purchased articles can then be viewed or downloaded. JavaScript support must be enabled to take full advantage of this feature.

  • Reference Linking: PRL now features reference sections (beginning with the January 1998 issue) containing link to citations from the SPIN and INSPEC databases and from the arXiv.org e-Print archive.

  • Improved Rendering of Mathematical Entities: HTML is now being used whenever possible to improve the online rendition of mathematical characters and expressions.

  • Searching (subscribers only): The Verity search engine now features an additional option for limiting a search by volume and/or issue. This function allows the user to specify a range of volumes or issues to be searched.

  • Access to SPIN Abstracts: the Research Library area of AIP's PINET Plus service is now available to PRL users (you will be prompted to log in if you have not already done so). From there one can access, in browse or search mode, the entire SPIN bibliographic database. All the other features and content of PINET Plus are also accessible.

• 13 August 1997: Reference sections with links to SPIN and INSPEC citations have been added to PRL abstracts, beginning with 1997 issues.

• 23 July 1997: Many new features have been added to PRL.

• 25 June 1997: Subject matter headings and article-type headings (Letters, Comments, and Errata) are now available in the HTML Tables of Contents, commencing with the January 1997 issues.

• 26 March 1997: The full complement of 1995 - 1996 back issues is now available (Vols. 74 through 77 complete).

• 13 March 1997: A direct link to the PDF Table of Contents (which includes section headings) is now available in the Current Issue section of the entry page.

• 24 February 1997: November 1996 back issues are now available.

• 10 February 1997: The Tables of Contents (PDF and HTML) and the abstract view of articles are no longer password protected. Password/username will only be requested for searching, viewing full text, and entrance to AIP's PINET Plus service via the Access to SPIN Abstracts link. When a password/username does apply, it is requested only once per "session."

  Password/username is NOT requested, at any point, for access via an institutional subscription.

• 27 January 1997: Access to SPIN Abstracts is now available via the Research Library area of AIP's PINET Plus service. From there one can access, in browse or search mode, the entire SPIN bibliographic database. All the other features and content of PINET Plus are also accessible.
  
  
• 13 January 1997: Back issues (1995, 1996) being prepared for online distribution. All issues to be available by April 1997.
  
  
• 1 January 1997: PRL is made available to current subscribers via AIP's Online Journal Service.