Recently I have been debating in my head the following question: Does the four page limit for papers in Physical Review Letters squash physics?
\nBenefits of the four page limit: (1) brevity enforces a focused article, (2) experiemental results can often be described in four pages, (3) you can tell when a paper is submitted to PRL on the preprint server by counting the number of pages.
\nProblems with the four page limit: (1) brevity means much is left out or compressed to near unreadability, (2) experimental techniques are rarely described in enough detail, (3) the compression to unreadibility means that general readership across the different sections of PRL, one of the supposed goals of the journal, is difficult if not impossible, (4) the papers are often light on citations since it is easier to cut citations to get to the page limits than to cut the content, (5) theories of any complexity are impossible to present in four pages without obmitting or skimming major portions of the work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently I have been debating in my head the following question: Does the four page limit for papers in Physical Review Letters squash physics? Benefits of the four page limit: (1) brevity enforces a focused article, (2) experiemental results can often be described in four pages, (3) you can tell when a paper is submitted … <\/p>\n