What are the goals of the new length guidelines?
The new length guidelines are designed to make it easier for authors to determine that their manuscripts meet the various length requirements of the APS journals. The previous requirements were tied to the final pagination as typeset in the journal and it has always been difficult to accurately estimate how a particular manuscript will be typeset. Often authors were asked to make changes at the proof stage to comply with the length requirements. The new scheme strives to avoid this as it is tied to more objective, easier to determine quantities. Also, authors no longer have to trade-off accurate bibliographies against the body of their paper. Nor are groups of authors penalized because of the length of their bylines.
How can I check the length of my manuscript?
We hope that the new guidelines are straightforward to follow. Please see http://publish.aps.org/authors/length-guide [1] for all journals except Reviews of Modern Physics and Physical Review X. For those two journals, please consult http://publish.aps.org/authors/length-guide-simplified [2].
How can I count the words in a TeX file?
Authors are advised to use REVTeX 4.1 for the preparation of their manuscript. REVTeX 4.1 files that format using the proper journal option ('prl' for Physical Review Letters for instance) and the 'reprint' option that fit within the journals' old page limits (Letters, Brief Reports, and PRST-PER Short Papers: 4 pages, Rapid Communications: 4 pages for Physical Review A, B, E; 5 pages for Physical Review C and D) except for the acknowledgment and bibliography will conform to the new guidelines. Alternatively, you can determine the word count of a REVTeX 4.1 file by:
The paper should still run under LaTeX. To get a precise word count, you can then use the wordcount.tex file found at http://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/wordcount [3].
How can I count the words in a Word file?
The easiest method is to make a copy of your manuscript and remove all of the text and other elements that aren't counted under the guidelines and then use Word's built-in word count function.
How can I determine the size (aspect ratio) of the figures?
GhostScript can be used to determine the bounding box of Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PDF figures:
cat figure.eps | gs -q -dSAFER -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bbox -
This can then be used to figure out the exact width and height of the figure. Various image programs will display the dimensions of JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other types of figure files. Alternatively, you may use a PDF viewer with cropping capabilities to draw a crop box around the figure and read off the dimensions. Finally, you may simply print out the figure and measure its dimensions. The units are arbitrary because the guidelines use the aspect ratio which is the width/height.
How is math counted?
For the purposes of the guidelines, all space characters separate words. Generally, for length-constrained papers, this works fairly well for inline math. For display equations, the guidelines depend on the number of lines taken up by the equation.
Links:
[1] http://publish.aps.org/authors/length-guide
[2] http://publish.aps.org/authors/length-guide-simplified
[3] http://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/wordcount