As of February 15, 2011, authors in most Physical Review journals have the option to pay an article-processing charge whereby their accepted manuscripts are made available barrier-free and open access. These manuscripts are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (3.0 Unported or 4.0 International), the most permissive of the CC licenses, which permits authors and others to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work, provided that proper credit is given. The article-processing charges have been set to cover all costs, thus providing a sustainable model. These charges will decrease the need for subscription revenue and will help to keep APS's subscription price-per-article among the lowest of any physics journals.
For more details, please see our announcement.