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April 2012

Publicity and Outreach: Instructions for Authors

The American Physical Society (APS) and American Institute of Physics (AIP) have publications that describe selected physics research papers to a broad audience of physicists, journalists, students, and the public. To suggest your paper for coverage, please follow the instructions below for submitting a summary of your work. The publications' editors will read your summary and consider covering your paper, and may also make the summary available to journalists. The summary should be submitted as soon as possible after acceptance of your paper. (Submission of a summary does not guarantee that your work will be covered by APS, AIP, or the media.)

Participating Publications and Productions:

• Physics (including Focus) APS online publication for physicists and others
• Physics Today AIP magazine for physicists
• Inside Science News Service AIP/APS news service for journalists and the public
• Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science TV (ISTV) AIP television spots for the public

To Have Your Paper Considered for Coverage:

1. Write a one-paragraph summary that explains what you did and why it's important at the level of a NON-SCIENTIST. See below for hints on writing a good summary.
2. Put a newspaper-style headline at the top of your text to summarize the result.
3. Send your plain text summary (no LaTeX or Word documents) to PRLsummaries*AT*aps.org (for Phys. Rev. Lett.) or to PhysRevsummaries*AT*aps.org (for Phys. Rev. A-E) with the subject line "summary AA9999", replacing "AA9999" with your paper's accession code. (Replace *AT* with @.)
4. You may attach one or a few small, low-resolution image files. Preferred formats are jpeg/jpg, gif, and png. These images are to enhance the summary, not for consideration for the PRL cover.
5. Please notify your institution's public information or press office regarding your paper's acceptance for publication, and if you write a summary, send it to them. They may even be able to help you write the summary, or they may want to mention the work in their own publications or want to inform your local media. (You may be able to find their email address by searching for your institution at http://sciencesources.eurekalert.org or http://www.newswise.com/resources/ncd/.)

What Happens Next

You should receive an automatic email acknowledgment. (It occasionally gets caught by spam filters; the FROM address is owner-prlpaperslists.apsmsgs.org.) Representatives from the publications and productions listed above read every summary. In choosing papers, they consider not only scientific significance, but also novelty, accessibility of the topic, the interests of their readers and viewers, timing of the paper's publication, space limitations, and the need to vary the sub-fields discussed. If they decide to further investigate your paper for possible coverage, they will contact you, but they cannot respond to every submission. (These summaries are just one of many sources of information available to the publications.)

Hints for Writing a Good Summary

1. Be brief. 200 words is usually enough, while many summaries are complete with 150 words. The publications only need a relatively shallow description of the work to decide whether to look at the manuscript. Shorter summaries are usually better because they include fewer details that tend to distract from the main points.
2. Try to get to the "bottom line" in the first sentence or two before stepping back to go over background information. Think of the way a newspaper article is written, with the most important points at the top.
3. Aim your summary at the general public, not physicists. Some of the summary readers are not physicists, and it helps all of them to visualize how the topic could be presented to a general audience. Avoid or define any jargon. State why your result is important in direct terms, even if it seems obvious. Using simple terms will not insult the readers' intelligence and will also be appreciated by your institution's public information or press office.
4. Clearly distinguish between what is new in your paper and what is merely background information. Your summary may contain some brief discussion of previous work, but make it obvious where you are switching to discussing the new work. Phrases like "In this paper, we . . ." are helpful as an indication of this transition.