Physical Review B 'Under Review': What Each Status Means

Physical Review B operates the APS Associate Editor + Editorial Board model. PRB has an Editorial Board of distinguished active scientists serving 3-year terms, selected by editors in consultation with APS units; Board members may be asked to advise at any stage of the review process and serve as adjudicators in formal appeals. Associate Editors manage the peer-review process and make editorial decisions, and PRB's editorial team consists of Ph.D. scientists.

PRB editorial culture is decisive: according to a 2014 PRB editorial, each rejection without external review involves at least 2 editors deliberating. Papers that pass the editorial screen have cleared the steepest filter in APS condensed matter publishing.

Before the paper reaches external referees, a PRB editor evaluates whether the condensed matter significance warrants PRB's editorial slots. APS said in a 2014 PRB editorial that about 1/3 of all submissions are rejected without external review, and that each of those decisions involves at least 2 editors deliberating.

A desk rejection most often means the editors concluded that the work would fit better at a sister APS journal (PRA for AMO, PRD for particle/astrophysics, PRE for statistical/biological, PRL for broad short-format Letters, PRX for broad open-access, PRX Quantum for quantum information, PRApplied for applied physics, PRMaterials for materials) or that the condensed matter priority bar is not met.

APS staff confirm that the submission meets minimum standards for peer review: file readability, certain APS style and formatting requirements, the ethics and research integrity policies, and the basic structure expected for a scientific article. The submission also carries PhySH subject classification (required) and a data-availability statement (prepared from author-supplied answers), and authors may add a cover letter directed to the editor.

The handling editor reads the paper and evaluates condensed matter significance, PhySH classification routing, and PRB subspecialty fit across semiconductors, magnetism, superconductivity, quantum materials, electronic structure, soft matter, and surfaces.

According to the 2014 PRB editorial 'Editorial rejection: A mindful process', each decision to reject a paper without external review involves considerable deliberation from at least 2 editors, and editors regularly engage the Editorial Board for advice on individual papers. APS does not publish how long this deliberation takes. It is a distinctive PRB feature that the editorial describes: rejections without external review are not made by a single editor alone.

PRB editors select a number of referees based on topical expertise; APS does not publish a standard referee count or a standard recruitment time. The recruitment window can take longer because referees with topic-matched condensed matter subspecialty expertise are scarce.

Once referees agree to review, APS reports a median of 47 days from submission to the first decision after peer review (2025, direct submissions), and the actual wait varies with referee availability. APS says Letters receive priority handling but publishes no separate Letter timing. Referee reports for PRB tend to be thorough given the condensed matter mechanism complexity.

After reports return, the handling editor synthesizes them. APS reports a median of 115 days from submission to acceptance and 135 days to online publication (2025, direct submissions).

• Rejection within the first week or so: Likely an integrity-check failure or a fast desk rejection; APS's median to the first decision on sending out for review is 6 days.

• Rejection within a few weeks: Likely a desk rejection after the editors' deliberation (about 1/3 of submissions, per the 2014 editorial).

• Still Under Review after 3 weeks: Good sign. The paper has likely passed the editorial screen.

• Still Under Review well past the 47-day APS median: Referee-recruitment or referee-report delay. A polite inquiry via the APS portal is appropriate.

• Status changes to a decision-stage label: Reports are in; the editors are deciding. APS publishes no duration for this stage.

This is the most common anxiety we hear from PRB authors during the active editorial window. The honest answer: no, 8 weeks at Under Review puts you a little past the APS median of 47 days to a first decision after peer review, so reports may still be arriving with the handling editor preparing for editorial synthesis. Most referee-driven delays come from referee-availability variability for condensed matter subspecialty experts rather than slow reviews.

If the portal still says Under Review at the 12-week mark, the most likely explanation is that one of the assigned referees asked for an extension and the editor granted it, though APS publishes no extension policy.

What you should NOT do during the 8-to-12-week window is email the editorial office; an inquiry at 8 weeks adds friction without accelerating the timeline.

If your PRB paper is rejected after review, the natural cascade depends on what the referees and handling editor cited:

Physical Review X (PRX) is the natural APS open-access cascade for broad short-form condensed matter papers. APS supports manuscript-transfer with referee reports preserved.

PRX Quantum is the APS cascade for quantum information physics from condensed matter origins.

Physical Review Applied is the APS cascade for applied condensed matter physics.

Physical Review Materials is the APS cascade for materials physics.

Physical Review Letters is the APS broader short-format cascade for broad-physics appeal condensed matter work. PRL uses Authors submission portal; editorial contact prl@aps.org.

Nature Physics is the external Springer Nature top-tier condensed matter cascade. The Nature Physics Manuscript Tracking System at mts-nphys.nature.com handles submission; nphys@nature.com handles publisher-level inquiries.

Nature Materials is the external Springer Nature top-tier materials cascade.

APS's referee guidelines ask referees to assess originality and significance, technical quality and rigor, presentation, and the Supplemental Material. The table below maps those expectations, plus the editors' two-editor deliberation on rejections, to actionable preparation.

Across Physical Review B manuscripts, the papers that make authors most anxious during Under Review are rarely weak in a simple way. They usually have enough physics to deserve a serious read, but the submission package leaves the handling editor or one referee doing too much interpretive work.

Across our pre-submission review work on Physical Review B, Physical Review Letters, Physical Review Materials, Physical Review Applied, and adjacent condensed matter journals, this is the failure pattern we see most often: the scientific result is real, but the submission package does not make PRB's editorial culture easy to satisfy.

Use this page when you need to decide what to improve during the waiting window rather than just refreshing the APS portal. Full Manusights reviews include a 60-day money-back guarantee, and we do not train AI on customer manuscripts.

Narrow-subfield framing flagged at two-editor deliberation

The most common Physical Review B weakness we see is an abstract that describes a material, device stack, numerical model, or measurement campaign without naming the condensed matter principle that should travel beyond the immediate sample. PRB editors are trying to decide whether the paper belongs in a broad condensed matter archive, not whether the experiment was hard. The fix is not hype.

It is a sharper claim map: what is the mechanism, what prior interpretation does it revise, which figure proves that revision, and what competing explanation remains alive? If your opening paragraph could also introduce a materials-specialist paper with no change in the scientific promise, run a Check whether your PRB condensed-matter significance is clear ->.

PhySH classification and referee routing do not match the manuscript

Physical Review B is unusually sensitive to routing because the wrong PhySH classification can put a quantum materials paper, spectroscopy paper, or computational condensed matter paper in front of referees who evaluate the wrong standard. We often see manuscripts where the methods are sound but the cover letter, keywords, and PhySH terms point in three different directions.

That creates delay and increases the chance that one referee reads the paper as incremental inside a narrow specialty. The stronger PRB submissions make the routing explicit in the cover letter: why this is PRB, why the selected PhySH terms are right, and which adjacent APS title would be wrong.

If the cover letter has never been checked against the abstract, figures, and PhySH selection as one routing package, use a Check if your PRB PhySH and referee-routing package is coherent ->.

Reproducibility evidence is split across too many places

PRB referees often read deeply into sample preparation, uncertainty, simulation settings, convergence tests, and data availability. The failure pattern is not always missing data; it is evidence scattered between the main text, captions, supplement, repository, and methods in a way that makes the central result hard to audit.

Before submission or revision, line up the main claim, the figure that supports it, the control measurement or calculation, the uncertainty estimate, and the exact method paragraph a referee would cite. If that chain crosses five files or leaves one step implied, it is a reviewer-risk issue.

A Check whether your PRB reproducibility package is referee-ready -> will catch the gaps that typically surface only after weeks of review.

This page was created from APS's public PRB editorial policies and practices at Journals author instructions, APS editorial documentation (the 2014 editorial's about 1/3 rejected without external review and two-editor deliberation for each such decision, the 2025 journal-metrics medians of 6 and 47 days, and the editorial board of distinguished active scientists serving 3-year terms), and Manusights pre-submission review experience with PRB-targeted manuscripts.

For the APS condensed matter landscape beyond PRB, see Physical Review X (PRX, broad open-access short-form), PRX Quantum (quantum information), Physical Review Applied (applied condensed matter), Physical Review Materials (materials physics), Physical Review Letters (broad short-format Letters), and external condensed matter alternatives (Nature Physics, Nature Materials, Science).

The choice across these titles depends on whether the central contribution is top condensed matter Regular Article (PRB), broad open-access short-form (PRX), quantum information (PRX Quantum), applied condensed matter (PRApplied), materials physics (PRMaterials), broad-physics short-format (PRL), or top-tier Nature Portfolio (Nature Physics, Nature Materials).

Referees at PRB are condensed matter subspecialty experts selected by the editors. Editors screen and triage manuscripts before any referee sees them with the two-editor deliberation safeguard for rejections without review, and preparing a response template that addresses both condensed matter significance and methodology perspectives accelerates revision rounds substantially.

For a pre-upload check of your manuscript against the PRB condensed-matter-significance bar before submission, our Physical Review B pre-submission diagnostic flags the framing and PhySH classification weaknesses most likely to surface in referee reports.