Reviews of Modern Physics Submission Guide

Source: Clarivate 2026 JCR release, APS editorial disclosures (accessed April 2026).

Submission caps: RMP proposals run approximately 2 to 5 pages. Articles accept up to 50,000 words (about 50 printed pages) and Colloquia up to 20,000 words; RMP publishes no separate limit on references, figures or tables (figures and tables count toward the word total). APS publishes no response times or acceptance rate for RMP.

• Proposal upload via the APS Submission Server. The Authors author instructions portal accepts the proposal, which should include a title, author list, abstract and table of contents, followed by an outline of the intended review showing the main sections; a short list of the most important references (20 to 30); a description of the author team's specific expertise, including key publications; an explanation of why the topic is timely; and how the review goes beyond cataloging the literature.

• Editor assessment of the proposal. The proposal should allow the editors to assess both the scope and the treatment of the subject. About half of RMP's reviews are invited, and most of the others are proposed in advance by the authors and encouraged by one of the editors.

• Commissioned writing. Authors of commissioned articles have one year to write the manuscript. During this time the agreed-upon topic is reserved; if the article is not submitted on time, the editorial team may stop reserving the topic and invite another author.

• External peer review. RMP follows the single-anonymized peer review procedures that APS publishes for all Physical Review journals.

• Revision and publication. The recommended time frame for resubmitting a revision is one month, though articles requiring more extensive revisions may take longer. After acceptance, authors should expect proofs with marked changes within approximately eight weeks.

Source: Reviews of Modern Physics author guidelines, APS.

This page covers the pre-proposal decision: whether the topic, timing, and author team support a viable RMP proposal. It does not cover full-submission revision dynamics or post-publication metrics, which belong on separate pages.

Use it when you are still deciding:

• whether your standing in the proposed topic supports a Review-level commission

• whether the topic has timing headroom relative to recent comprehensive reviews

• whether the proposed scope justifies a long-form Article treatment (up to 50,000 words)

Before submitting a proposal, the package should already make four things easy to see in the approximately 2-5 pages APS asks for:

• the proposed topic and its specific framing or argument

• why the synthesis is needed now (a recent paradigm shift, a 5-year accumulation of new evidence, a methodological consolidation)

• what differentiates the proposal from existing reviews in adjacent venues

• why the proposing authors are the right team for this synthesis

APS asks the proposal to include:

• a title, author list, abstract, and table of contents, followed by an outline of the intended review showing the main sections

• an explanation of why the topic is timely, naming the specific physics inflection

• an articulation of how the review goes beyond cataloging the literature, including how it differs from recent RMP, Annual Review, or Physics Reports pieces

• a description of the author team's specific expertise, including key publications that establish authority on the subject

• a short list of the most important references (20 to 30), organized by topic

Common failures here are timing and authority failures, not formatting:

• Recent RMP, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, or Physics Reports coverage of the same topic. The proposal guidelines ask why the topic is timely. A proposal that overlaps a recent comprehensive review is the most common proposal-stage friction point.

• Author standing is in adjacent rather than central physics. The proposal guidelines ask for the author team's specific expertise, including key publications that establish authority on the subject, and a record in adjacent rather than central physics is hard to show there.

• The synthesis argument is missing. "A review of recent advances in [topic]" is not a synthesis argument. Editors look for a specific organization, framework, or framing that the field needs.

• Scope is wrong for the venue. Topics narrow enough for a shorter review article elsewhere in APS (the length guide sets 30,000 words for Review Articles in Physical Review Applied and Physical Review Materials) often don't justify an RMP Article's length and depth.

RMP is a venue for definitive syntheses, not surveys. The journal's reputation rests on Reviews that establish or reorganize a field's understanding for a 5-15 year window.

The invited and proposed model: approximately half of RMP's reviews are invited, and most of the others are proposed in advance by the authors and encouraged by one of the editors.

The 5-year timing window (a Manusights rule of thumb, not an APS rule): unlike Nature Reviews journals' 18-24 month window, RMP's effective timing window is longer because RMP Reviews are deeper. A new RMP review of a topic covered by an existing RMP Review is rare unless 5+ years have passed and a paradigm has clearly shifted.

The authority standard: the proposal must describe the author team's specific expertise in the area, including key publications that establish authority on the subject. RMP reviews are read as authoritative because the authors built the field they're synthesizing.

The proposal usually needs:

• a synthesis-level argument or framework, not a comprehensive survey

• one defensible "why now" inflection point

• author CVs that establish primary-research authority on the specific topic

• a clear point of view

Ask before you propose:

• could a physicist outside the immediate sub-discipline grasp the takeaway from the abstract?

• has a comparable comprehensive review appeared in RMP, Annual Reviews, or Physics Reports in the last 5 years?

• does the corresponding author have sustained primary-research publications in the exact topic?

• does the proposal articulate a specific synthesis argument, or is it a survey?

If the answers are uncertain, the timing or authority problem is usually more important than the formatting.

Before submitting to Reviews of Modern Physics, a Reviews of Modern Physics submission readiness check identifies whether the package meets the editorial bar before you commit to the submission.

For a broader file-level scan before upload, use the Manusights AI manuscript review to catch proposal-angle, reference-map, and author-authority weaknesses before approaching APS.

The strongest RMP proposals sound like a senior physicist briefing the RMP editors on a synthesis the field needs, not pitching a topic for promotion.

They usually:

• state the synthesis argument in one sentence

• explain the timing inflection in two sentences

• distinguish from existing reviews briefly

• establish author credentials with primary-research evidence

• propose a working title and approximate structure

If the proposal sounds like the authors are seeking validation rather than offering a synthesis, the response is usually slow.

• Is Reviews of Modern Physics a good journal?

• Physical Review Letters submission guide

Before drafting the proposal, run it through a Reviews of Modern Physics proposal-readiness check to confirm the timing, angle, and author authority case is strong.

Across Manusights submission reviews for physics review proposals targeting Reviews of Modern Physics, three patterns generate the most consistent proposal-stage failures. (Per APS RMP author materials, RMP is built for broad physicist readership, active areas of fundamental and applied physical science, and articles that are more than a catalog of work done.) These patterns are testable in the proposal abstract, section outline, reference map, author CV evidence, cover letter, and candidate figures before you approach APS.

Author authority sits next to the topic instead of inside the topic

For Reviews of Modern Physics proposals, the most damaging pattern is authority mismatch. The manuscript topic may be important, but the corresponding author's primary-research record sits in a neighboring subfield rather than the exact one being synthesized.

RMP Reviews become durable reference articles for physicists, graduate students, instructors, and scientists entering the area; that role makes the author-authority signal unusually load-bearing. Editors and advisors can see the mismatch in the proposal's author paragraph, publication list, reference map, and section outline.

Warning signs include an author CV dominated by adjacent methods rather than the target phenomenon, a proposal that leans on collaborators for the core domain expertise, figures reproduced from another community's framing, and a cover letter that asserts authority without showing the primary-research trail.

Manuscripts with this pattern usually route better to Physics Reports for specialist synthesis, Reports on Progress in Physics for broad but less APS-specific reviews, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics for condensed-matter annual synthesis, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics for astrophysics, Living Reviews in Relativity for relativity, or a review article in a specialist APS journal, such as Physical Review Applied or Physical Review Materials, when the scope is narrower.

The fix is to either recruit a senior co-author whose publication record built the exact subfield, narrow the proposed Reviews of Modern Physics topic to the author's proven core, or choose a venue where adjacent-field authorship is less of a proposal-stage blocker.

Check whether your RMP proposal proves author authority inside the topic →

Recent review already owns the topic

In our pre-submission review work, the second repeated pattern is a proposal that arrives after another comprehensive review has already occupied the field's synthesis slot. Reviews of Modern Physics does not need a second literature map unless the new piece reorganizes the field. The timing problem appears in the reference section, topic outline, "why now" paragraph, and proposed figures.

Editors will notice when the first five references include a recent RMP, Physics Reports, Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nature Reviews Physics, or Reports on Progress in Physics article covering the same backbone.

The manuscript components that usually fail are: a generic "recent progress" abstract, an outline following the same chronology as a recent review, figures that reproduce the same conceptual map, and a cover letter that claims growth in publication volume without identifying a new organizing principle.

The fix is to name a real inflection point: a new experimental capability, a theoretical consolidation, a contradiction resolved by recent data, a standards change, or a field split that now needs integration.

If that inflection does not exist, the stronger route is often a narrower topical review, a Perspective-style article, Physics Reports, Nature Reviews Physics, Annual Review, or a specialist journal where a focused update is acceptable.

Check whether your RMP proposal has timing headroom against existing reviews →

Survey outline without a synthesis argument for broad physics readers

For RMP-targeted proposals, the third pattern is a technically competent literature survey that never states what the synthesis will establish. APS RMP article guidance emphasizes that an ideal review is more than a catalog of work done and should provide a framework useful to practitioners and people entering the field.

Editors can see the survey problem in the title, proposal abstract, table of contents, candidate figures, and conclusion plan. Warning signs include section headings that simply list subtopics, references grouped by year rather than by unresolved question, figures that summarize known categories without explaining tradeoffs, and a proposed conclusion that says "future directions" instead of naming the field's open questions.

Reviews of Modern Physics needs a synthesis-level argument: a unified framework, a consensus map, a taxonomy of competing mechanisms, a standards-setting explanation, or a clear statement of what the field now understands differently. If the manuscript remains a survey, it is often a better fit for Contemporary Physics, Reports on Progress in Physics, Scholarpedia-style references, Annual Review venues, or a specialty review journal.

The fix is to rewrite the outline around the conceptual claim, then make the abstract, figures, and reference map prove that claim rather than merely inventory the literature.

Check whether your Reviews of Modern Physics proposal is submission-ready →

How do I submit to Reviews of Modern Physics?

About half of the reviews Reviews of Modern Physics publishes are invited by the editors. Most of the others are proposed in advance by the authors, and their submission is encouraged by one of the RMP editors. Prospective authors submit a proposal of approximately 2 to 5 pages through the APS Submission Server, covering the intended outline, 20 to 30 key references, the author team's expertise, why the topic is timely, and how the review goes beyond cataloging the literature.

What does Reviews of Modern Physics publish?

RMP publishes Articles, which review active areas of physics (length limit 50,000 words, about 50 printed pages), and Colloquia, which describe recent research of interest to a broad audience of physicists (length limit 20,000 words). Articles focusing primarily on a single author's own work are not suitable. The journal aims to inform a broad readership of physicists and those in related fields about research trends in all relevant areas of fundamental and applied physical science.

How long does Reviews of Modern Physics take?

APS does not publish a proposal response time or a typical time to publication for RMP. Authors of commissioned articles have one year to write the manuscript, and APS says to expect proofs within approximately eight weeks of acceptance.

Why are Reviews of Modern Physics proposals usually rejected?

APS does not publish reasons or rates for declined proposals. Its proposal criteria point to three risks: timing (a recent comprehensive review covers the same ground), authority (the proposers lack the standing to write the definitive synthesis), and scope (the proposed topic is too narrow or too broad for RMP's broad physics readership).

• Reviews of Modern Physics Under Review status

Time spent on the wrong journal's format is time you do not get back. Test my abstract against Reviews of Modern Physics before I reformat before I reformat.