August 2017

Publicity Instructions for Authors

If your paper has been accepted for publication by an APS journal, you are encouraged to submit a summary as soon as possible that explains what you did that is new and why it’s important. These summaries help APS editors consider papers for coverage in the following places:

• Physics Magazine: daily news and commentary describing a selection of papers from the APS journal collection
• Media tip sheet: weekly email message distributed to journalists, which has led to news articles in publications such as Science, Nature, and the New York Times
• Editors' Suggestions: papers that are prominently displayed on the journal web pages because they are judged to be particularly important, interesting, or well written

APS also encourages authors to contact their institution’s public information or press office regarding further publicity (see item 5 below).

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 author-summaries@aps.org with the subject line "summary [accession code]".
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://www.newswise.com/resources/ncd/.)

What Happens Next

You should receive an automatic email acknowledgment. (The FROM address is author-summaries+noreply@aps.org in case you need to search your spam/junk folder.) In choosing papers, the APS editors consider not only scientific significance, but also novelty, accessibility of the topic, timing of the paper's publication, space limitations, and the need to cover a variety of sub-fields. If they decide to further investigate your paper, they will contact you, but they cannot respond to every submission. (These summaries are just one of many sources of information available to the editors.)

Hints for Writing a Good Summary

1. Be brief. 200 words is usually enough. 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. Using this style helps the editors 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.
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.