Editorial: phys. stat. sol. (RRL) 2/1

Abstract

A year has passed since the Rapid Research Letter section of physica status solidi has been launched as an independent journal in November 2006. So this is a good time to look back and to analyze how pss-RRL as the youngest member of the pss family of journals has developed and, more importantly, whether our goal to provide a truly rapid forum for publication of important results in the broad field of Solid State Physics has been reached. O.k., let's see: At present, on the average one to two RRL manuscripts per day reach the pss Editorial Office in Berlin. After a careful editorial screening, each suitable manuscript is sent to two or three referees who are carefully selected from the growing list of almost 5.000 scientists all over the world. Because of the priority handling of RRL manuscripts, this typically happens within one or two work days after submission. On the average, this peer review takes about 10 days, after which a first editorial decision (acceptance, revision, rejection) is made on the basis of at least two independent referee reports. In most cases, the manuscripts then immediately are returned to the corresponding authors for revision. Less than three weeks after submission, the final editorial decision is reached, and the accepted manuscript is published online after a very short average production time of only two or three days. Thus, on the average the time from submission to online publication of RRL manuscripts is less than 25 working days, including strict peer review and revision by the authors. At present, this is definitely world record compared to all other Letter Journals in Solid State Physics! And the fact that speed does not require any compromises with respect to peer review is documented by the high selectivity of pss-RRL: of the almost 400 manuscripts submitted in 2007, only 135 have made it into the first six issues of Volume 1. Average times (in full working days) for various workflow steps in the editorial and production process of the Rapid Research Letters published in physica status solidi (RRL) in 2007. Regional distribution of corresponding authors of the Rapid Research Letters published in pss in 2007. Also the international visibility of pss-RRL has developed in a very positive way. Each article published online has been downloaded over the internet on the average more than 100 times. The Rapid Research Letters of physica status solidi are listed as an independent journal by ISI and will receive a separate Impact Factor in 2009. Already today, pss-RRL attracts high quality manuscripts from all over the world, as shown by the diagram above. So, all of us here at the Editorial Office of pss look forward to a continuing positive development of the new Rapid Research Letters and will do our best to ensure the same unrivalled combination of speed and scientific quality for the years to come. We express our sincere gratitude to all referees, authors, and readers who have helped to make Volume 1 of pss-RRL a success and hope to receive your manuscript in the near future! Editor-in-Chief of physica status solidi since 1995, is a Director of the Walter Schottky Institute and Chair for Experimental Semiconductor Physics at Munich University of Technology. His main scientific interests concern semiconductor heterostructures and devices for bioelectronics, sensors, spintronics, and photovoltaics.