Physical Review Letters APC and Open Access: APS Pricing, SCOAP3, and What Physicists Actually Pay

PRL was designed for short, high-impact papers. APS limits a Letter to 3,750 words for the core of the paper, which it says works out to about four journal pages, and a Letter can add up to two pages of End Matter that do not count against the limit. The limit is not enforced through page surcharges: a paper determined to be overlength at submission is sent back to be shortened.

Separately, to help defray editorial and production expenses, authors of published Letters may contribute an Optional Page Charge:

• $830 for a Letter

• $310 for a Comment or Reply

Authors are not required to pay this charge to publish in PRL under the traditional subscription model. Charges for color figures in print and for reprints are separate.

The practical advice is to keep your Letter within the length limit. Move non-essential derivations, supplementary figures, and extended data analysis to End Matter or Supplemental Material, although APS says Supplemental Material should not be used to avoid a length limit.

Here's where PRL's pricing gets genuinely interesting. The SCOAP3 consortium (Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics), coordinated by CERN, covers OA publication costs for high-energy physics articles in participating journals.

PRL is a SCOAP3 participating journal. If your paper is classified as high-energy physics (HEP), the following happens:

1. Your paper is accepted by PRL through normal peer review.

1. APS checks the arXiv ID and primary category (hep-ex, hep-th, hep-ph or hep-lat).

1. SCOAP3 covers the APC. You pay nothing, provided APS receives your arXiv ID and you agree to a CC BY license.

1. The paper is published as gold OA under CC BY.

SCOAP3 is a remarkable model. Instead of individual authors or institutions paying APCs, the consortium redirected existing library subscription budgets into a pool that covers OA for an entire subdiscipline. APS has participated since January 1, 2018, and the current arrangement extends to articles published through 2027.

If your paper is posted to arXiv with a hep primary category, your PRL publication can be open access without an APC, although you do need to give APS the arXiv ID and agree to a CC BY license.

Physics is the field that invented preprint culture. arXiv has been the primary distribution channel for physics papers since the 1990s. When a physicist finishes a paper, they post it to arXiv. Often weeks or months before journal publication.

This changes the OA calculus significantly. Most physicists already have their work freely accessible on arXiv before PRL peer review is complete. The "open access" that PRL offers is access to the formatted, peer-reviewed, version-of-record paper. But the scientific content was already public.

For this reason, many physicists don't feel the same pressure to pay for gold OA that biologists or medical researchers do. Their community reads arXiv, not journal websites. The journal version is important for the formal record, for citations, and for tenure files. But practical access to the science doesn't depend on it.

It's not that physicists don't value open access. Many already have it, through arXiv.

APS has its own set of institutional arrangements, though they're less extensive than those of Springer Nature or Wiley:

The US physics community doesn't have the same large-scale Read & Publish infrastructure that biology and chemistry enjoy through Springer Nature, Elsevier, and Wiley. APS journals are society-published and priced more modestly, so the institutional deal landscape is thinner.

For most US-based physicists, the practical approach is: publish via the subscription route (free), post to arXiv (free), and if your funder requires formal OA, pay the $4,140 APC from your grant or departmental funds.

Automatic waivers: APS offers APC waivers to submitting corresponding authors doing research in over 115 lower-income countries and territories. APS identifies qualifying articles automatically.

Other discounts: APS says it does not currently provide other discounts or waivers for PRL. Any queries about eligibility must be sent to help@aps.org no later than the point of article submission.

Institutional agreements: Authors at institutions covered by an APS open access agreement publish open access with no individual APC payment.

SCOAP3 coverage: For HEP articles, this functions as a complete waiver funded by the consortium rather than the publisher.

The $4,140 APC is paid by the author, institution or funder, so check an institutional agreement, SCOAP3 and the lower-income-country waiver before budgeting for it.

1. PRL published 2,971 papers in 2025 (APS metrics page), and APS's archived July 2013 policy says fewer than 25% of submitted papers were finally accepted. This makes it competitive but not prohibitively selective. The journal covers all areas of physics, from condensed matter to astrophysics to quantum information. Getting into PRL requires a clear, significant result, but it doesn't require the kind of once-in-a-decade breakthrough that Nature Physics demands.

2. You can post your article on arXiv. For subscription articles for which APS holds copyright, APS says authors may post and update the article on free-access e-print servers such as arXiv, as long as the APS-formatted version of record is not used and the APS copyright is clear. Combined with the arXiv preprint, this means your work can be freely readable from day one via arXiv. The $4,140 APC buys you immediate formal OA under a CC BY license, with the version of record free to all readers, but the practical difference is small.

3. PRL has the highest citation count of any physics journal. Despite its modest IF (~8.1), PRL's total citation volume exceeds that of Nature Physics, Science, and every other physics venue. This is because PRL publishes far more papers and has been the standard venue for physics results for over 60 years. A PRL publication is universally recognized across all physics subdisciplines.

APS says posting the article on e-print servers such as arXiv is compliant with many funder policies around the world, including in the USA, without any APC. Plan S is the exception: it requires immediate OA with CC BY, which means either paying the $4,140 APC or having SCOAP3 cover it (for HEP papers).

DOE-funded researchers can comply through DOE's OSTI repository, where the accepted manuscript is deposited. No APC needed.

• The Optional Page Charge is optional. APS invites authors of published Letters to contribute $830, but authors are not required to pay it under the traditional subscription model.

• Supplemental Material is free. Move non-essential derivations and extended data there, although APS says it should not be used to avoid a length limit.

• arXiv posting is expected. While not technically required, virtually all PRL authors post to arXiv. If you don't, your paper may get less early attention from the physics community.

• Color is free online. Print color costs $1,090 for a single figure and $595 for each additional color figure.

• Length review: PRL editors may ask you to shorten your paper during review, not just for scientific reasons but to fit the format. This is a feature of the journal's editorial philosophy, not a bug.

• Your institution matters for pricing. If your institution is covered by an APS open access agreement, the APC is covered centrally. Confirm your institution's status before submission.

For most physicists, publishing in PRL costs nothing or close to it. APS says there is no required fee on the subscription route. arXiv provides immediate public access to the science.

If you need formal gold OA (for Plan S compliance or institutional mandates), the 2026 APS price is $4,140. And if you're in HEP, SCOAP3 covers even that.

The main cost to check is whether an institutional agreement, SCOAP3 or a waiver already covers the APC. Keep your Letter within the length limit and confirm your institution's open access agreement status.

For more about APS publishing options, visit the APS Publications page. For a comparison with a multidisciplinary alternative, see our PNAS APC guide.

Before submitting to PRL, make sure your paper communicates a clear, significant result within the journal's tight format constraints. PRL values conciseness and impact. Physical Review Letters submission readiness check to check whether your manuscript is structured for the kind of efficient, high-signal presentation that PRL editors expect.

Worth paying if:

• Your funder mandates open access (check Plan S / cOAlition S requirements)

• An institutional Read & Publish agreement covers the fee

• Open access visibility meaningfully benefits your research area

• The APC fits within your grant budget

Consider alternatives if:

• The APC is a personal out-of-pocket expense

• A subscription option or green OA (preprint + embargo) satisfies your funder

• Another OA journal with a lower APC would provide similar visibility

For a manuscript-specific signal before you submit, run a Physical Review Letters submission readiness check.

Or see example reports before you finalize.