Written and maintained by CASRAI Editorial Board
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Physical Review X (PRX) is the American Physical Society’s fully open access journal for physics across disciplines. Its 2025 Journal Impact Factor, as reported by APS, is 16.8. This page gathers the publisher-reported facts in one place and explains how to read them. Figures below are taken from the APS journal pages as read on 2026-11-07.
What is Physical Review X for?
PRX publishes applied, fundamental and interdisciplinary physics. APS describes it as “high-impact open access physics from across the disciplines”, with examples including condensed matter, quantum science, astrophysics and materials science. Its stated acceptance criteria are fundamental discoveries, advances in the state of the art, and new connections between fields.
Who runs it and what it covers
- Publisher: American Physical Society (APS), a not-for-profit society publisher.
- ISSN: 2160-3308 (online).
- Access and licence: fully open access under CC BY 4.0; authors retain copyright. An article publication charge is due once a paper is accepted, and APS offers waivers for authors from lower-income countries.
- Peer review: APS describes a “highly personalized, interactive” dialog among authors, editors and referees. The page does not specify a blinding model. PRX editors can decide to accelerate review for a small number of manuscripts reporting particularly important or groundbreaking research.
- Indexing: Science Citation Index (ISI), Scopus, Inspec, Google Scholar and DOAJ.
- Launch: APS announced the journal in January 2011.
Physical Review X impact factor and other metrics
The journal page’s panel headed “All metrics are from 2025” lists the figures below. Searches such as “physics review x impact factor”, “impact factor physical review x” and “physical review x impact factor” all resolve to these same numbers.
| Metric (2025, per APS) | Value | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Journal Impact Factor | 16.8 | Citations in a year to items from the previous two years, divided by citable items (Clarivate) |
| CiteScore | 23.2 | Scopus metric; uses a different window and document set, so it differs from the JIF |
| h5-index | 127 | Five-year h-index (Google Scholar) |
| SJR | 6.494 | SCImago Journal Rank, weights citations by the prestige of the citing journal |
| Normalized Eigenfactor | 12.15899 | Network-based influence score |
| Published papers; total citations | 309; 40,187 | Volume figures shown on the journal page |
| Days: first decision before review; after review; submission to acceptance; to publication | 9; 64; 243; 289 | Turnaround figures shown by APS |
The numbers differ because each indexer counts different documents over different windows, so compare journals only within one metric. See journal impact factor, CiteScore, h-index and SCImago Journal Rank for the definitions.
How the impact factor has moved
- 2013: first impact factor 6.711, immediacy index 2.225 (APS News).
- 2021: APS’s tenth-anniversary piece cited a JIF of 15.762.
- 2025: 16.8 (journal page).
Using the PRX site
The journal home page at journals.aps.org/prx offers these entry points:
- Latest Research lists recent articles.
- Highlights, including papers “Featured in Physics”, shows selected work.
- Collections groups articles by theme.
- Filter narrows article lists.
- Article Lookup finds a paper by citation, DOI, or journal/volume/article ID.
- Announcements carries journal news.
The sign-in for journal accounts is labelled “Sign In to Your Journals Account” on the same page. Manuscripts prepared in LaTeX commonly use APS’s REVTeX class.
Strengths and limits
- Strengths: open access with reuse under CC BY 4.0; high reported citation metrics; broad interdisciplinary scope; published decision-time figures; run by a society publisher.
- Limits: an article publication charge applies on acceptance; metrics are numbers from different indexers and should not be read as a quality ranking across fields.
Related Physical Review titles
PRX is one of several APS titles, and the names are easy to confuse. Each journal has its own metrics, so do not reuse PRX’s figures for the others.
| Title | CASRAI page |
|---|---|
| PRX Quantum | PRX Quantum impact factor |
| PRX Life | PRX Life impact factor |
| Physical Review Letters | Physical Review Letters impact factor |
| Physical Review A, B, D, E and Physical Review Research | See each journal’s page on journals.aps.org |
FAQ
What is Physical Review X for?
It publishes open access physics of broad significance across subfields: applied, fundamental and interdisciplinary work (APS, read 2026-11-07).
What are the top 10 journals in physics?
There is no single official list. Rankings depend on the metric, the year and the category definition. Check the physics categories in Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate) or the subject-area rankings on SCImago for a current list, and note which metric each uses.
What are Q1 journals in physics?
Q1 means a journal sits in the top quarter of its subject category on a given metric. SCImago assigns quartiles by SJR and Journal Citation Reports by JIF. A journal can be Q1 in one category and lower in another, and quartiles change yearly, so look up the current year for the exact category.
Is Phys Rev a good journal?
This is an editorial interpretation, not a ranking. The Physical Review titles are society-published, peer-reviewed journals; PRX reports a 2025 JIF of 16.8 and is indexed in the Science Citation Index, Scopus and DOAJ. Whether a given title suits you depends on scope fit, publication charges and your field’s norms.
Sources
- APS, Physical Review X, About: journals.aps.org/prx/about (read 2026-11-07).
- APS, Physical Review X home: journals.aps.org/prx (read 2026-11-07).
- APS News, 2013: Phys Rev X debuts with top-ten impact factor ranking.
- APS News, 2021: Physical Review X celebrates 10 years.
