On returning home from Boston (one and a half days late due to 1. a broken plane and 2. a missed connection in Dulles), I found I had received my first copy of Nature Physics. I must say, I was very impressed by the first issue. Why? Well first of all are the gorgeous color pictures. Everyone loves color pictures, right? Seeing a journal of well written, beautifully typeset and illustrated physics articles appeals to the right side of my brain (the part that hasn’t shriveled away from too much math 😉 ) Second was that, unlike PRL, of which there is absolutely no way one can read all of the articles in a single issue, Nature Physics has a reasonable number of well written articles (at least for this initial issue.) I see from their author submission page that letters are limited to 1500 words long (typically four pages long) and articles to 3000 words long, which is a bit more freedom than that afforded by Physical Review Letters. I suspect that Nature Physics will quickly become a prestigious place to publish ones work. Of course, in an idealized world, it wouldn’t matter where you publish your work, as long as it was excellent work. On the other hand, it is true that due to the selectivity of different journals I’m more likely to find excellent work in certain journals than in others.
O brave new quantum world!