Beginning January 1, 2016, the names of Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams (PRST-AB) will change to Physical Review Accelerators and Beams (PRAB), and Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research (PRST-PER) will change to Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER).
In 1998, PRST-AB was launched after an extensive study by the American Physical Society (APS) and its Division of the Physics of Beams to publish an online-only, wide ranging, and widely distributed peer-reviewed journal for the accelerators and beams community. In 2005, a second journal in this series dedicated to the field of physics education research, PRST-PER, resulted from discussions between APS, the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), and the APS Forum on Education.
Since the launch of these two journals, the Physical Review collection has continued to grow and now includes two additional subject specific journals: Physical Review Applied and Physical Review Fluids. With the launch of these journals, it has become apparent that the Special Topics name, originally envisioned as a series, is no longer needed for the journals published by APS. Removing Special Topics also integrates these journals into the Physical Review family and better emphasizes their content.
Renaming PRST-AB and PRST-PER means there will be other changes, including new URLs and new ISSNs in 2016. There will also be a transition period to move the Impact Factor (IF) data from the old titles to the new titles, most notably in 2018 when the 2017 IFs are published. In 2018, there will be two separate IFs for 2017, one for the old titles that may appear deceptively high and one for the new titles that may appear deceptively low. In 2019, The transition period will be complete, and all 2018 journal metrics will apply to only the new titles. The archives of all articles for these journals will continue to be accessible from the PRAB and PRPER web sites free of charge.
APS Leadership and the Editorial Boards of the newly named PRAB and PRPER are aware of what this name change means and strongly believe that removing Special Topics will not only strengthen the reputation of these journals, but also the Physical Review family.