Guidelines for Calculating Length (2024)

Word Count Procedure

The following guidelines can be used to determine the length of a manuscript submitted to the Physical Review journals. The general formula for calculating a manuscript’s length is:

Total Word Count = Text + Displayed Math + Figures + Tables

Counting Words in a TeX File

Authors are advised to use REVTeX 4.2 for the preparation of their manuscript, using the proper journal option (‘prl’ for Physical Review Letters for instance). Manuscripts that fit within the following page limits are likely to conform to the length guidelines: Letters and PRPER Short Papers: 4 pages, Letters: 4 pages for PRB; 5 pages for Physical Review A, C, D, E, Fluids, Materials, and Research. Alternatively, you can determine the word count of a REVTeX 4.2 file by:

• Commenting out the \maketitle command
• Using the 'nofootinbib' option
• Putting an \end{document} before the bibliography
• Comment out any display equations
• Commenting out the rows (but not the caption) of any tables
• Commenting out the acknowledgment

The paper should still run under LaTeX. To get a precise word count, you can then use the wordcount.tex file found at https://ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/wordcount.

Counting Words in a Word File

To count the number of words in a Word document, make a copy of your manuscript and remove all of the text and other elements that aren’t counted under the guidelines. Then use Word’s built-in word count function.

Determining the Size of Figures

GhostScript can be used to determine the bounding box of Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) and PDF figures:

You can then use the size of the bounding box to figure out the exact width and height of the figure. Various image programs will display the dimensions of JPEG, GIF, PNG, and other types of figure files. Alternatively, you may use a PDF viewer with cropping capabilities to draw a crop box around the figure and read off the dimensions. Finally, you may simply print out the figure and measure its dimensions. The units are arbitrary because the guidelines use the aspect ratio, which is the width/height.

Word Count Limits

The length restrictions for different article types vary among the Physical Review journals. The length limits are given in the following table: